I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— and you, and his sisters, and his female friends, and his teachers, and heck, even to the nice elderly checkout lady at the grocery store.

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— and by “her,” I mean all women — but not because he should or because it’s expected, but rather because as he has grown up, he’s learned the utter importance of showing compassion and appreciation for other people, especially for the females in his life.

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— because there is big chance at some point in his life, he will be drained of money, time and energy, and flowers are a cheap way to give a caring salute.

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— because he knows that women respond to actions and outward expressions, not just words.

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— because often beautiful blooms are capable of coloring a world oversaturated with so much black and white and right and wrong.

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— because doing so perpetuates that notion that if flowers can grow and bloom, so can people (& so can she).

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— to remind women that beauty exists naturally in the world, even when the world and the people in it act so ugly.

I want you to raise your son to give her flowers

— because of the way it made me feel last weekend when my son ran off the soccer field, mid-game, to giddily deliver me a flower that he found.

A whole world (in the form of a literal soccer game) was happening around my son, and all that mattered to him and made him happy in that moment, was to deliver his mother a small bit of joy in the form of a flower.

You succeeded, son.