How do you take in this much beauty? What do you do with it?

Two visits to the Spring Flower Show at Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens raise such questions.

Maybe that's the uneasiness I feel at first -- you don't do anything with sheer beauty. I walk into Phipps and I stop doing. But it is hard, like braking too fast on a gravel road -- skidding and sliding to an awkward stop.

Entering at the Palm Court, I have to sit down a minute. Do you remember that there is a compass made of stones embedded in the center of the floor? I had forgotten. I find south, which points to my home.

In my memory, the Palm Court is filled with organ music. For years, there was always a woman playing the organ, dressed in a floor-length chiffon gown, a pastel. I can still sense her being there, in the center, even now that she's gone.

A visit to Phipps Conservatory in Oakland began with her. The music filled the room, floated through the trees, down the paths and enveloped the daffodils, hydrangeas and tulips. A little girl in patent leather shoes, I wanted to be like her -- talented and able to add something to the world.

These days, I sometimes come here alone so that I don't have to talk, to comment or exclaim. Walking through Phipps with a friend, a sister or a love is fine; but today I want only to hear the waterfall.

People bring digital cameras to snap the flowers. I know the impulse, to take the beauty with you, to look at it again another time. I have a photograph of my mother, smiling at me across the sunken garden. She is always here, even now that she is gone.

I brought a pen instead of a camera. I thought I would write about the fuzzy leaves creeping out of the wrought iron fence in the Victorian Room, asserting themselves beyond their boundaries.

Delphinium -- supported by spikes, their petals seem to be floating as much as growing. Fans mounted in the ceiling allow the flowers to flutter.

When I ask an attendant for directions -- how nice to still be able to get lost -- she points me to the sunken garden again.

"It's been here since the '50s," she says.

So have I.

Maybe I can stop doing now -- put my pen away and see what happens. Just walk and look, and take in the beauty as well as I can.

It's scary. But here goes.