Daffodils, 1950
On a country road not far from where I live, there's a house I never notice except in the spring. Dozens of daffodils press against the front of this ragged little place. It looks abandoned, but the daffodils couldn't care less. They are wildly happy the way daffodils always are, their gold faces drinking in the sun and sky.
Who planted them, I wonder, and when?
I dial back the years to 1950 or so and picture a young woman in calico with an apron full of bulbs. She kneels down in the light of a breezy September morning and gets to work. As her trowel pierces the red-clay earth, she thinks about her ailing mom or her husband's upcoming birthday or a poem she would like to write if she can ever find time. She drops in the first bulb and keeps going down the row.
"I'll have these to look at in the spring," she tells herself.
She is sturdy and strong. A week after planting the bulbs, she learns she's pregnant with her first child. The joy she feels flows out of her hands and hair and into the air around the little house. When the daffodils bloom, she is nearly eight months pregnant, big and round and eager to get on with things. Bending down to gather a bouquet, she laughs at herself when she nearly topples over.
The bulbs will replicate over time. She and her husband will have four babies in seven years; three will survive. The name of the oldest, the one growing inside her while she planted those bulbs, will be etched on a shining wall in Washington, D.C.
When the news of her son's death arrives, the woman will be living far from the daffodils. She will be separated from her husband, angry at the world. It will be ages before she can laugh again.
But the time comes when the tight petals of her heart slowly open. She takes night classes, has grandchildren, helps a fragile friend. The years drift by.
One day a nurse at the doctor's office comments on the beauty of her eyes and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. She goes home, takes off her glasses, looks in the mirror: her eyes are as blue as the sky above Rapidan, Virginia.
It's been a long time since she thought of that place. Something comes to her--a flickering of light, a rush of gold. Wasn't there a poem she always meant to write, a few things she really wanted to say? She had meant to say them all these years.
The telephone rings: her granddaughter, on her way to take her to lunch.
She smooths her hair and sits down to wait. Outside the high windows of her apartment, a hawk flies by. It is a clear, calm day. The kitchen clock ticks. She rummages around in her purse for the notepad she uses for her grocery list. The buzzer sounds just as she writes a single word, followed by a year. "It's a beginning," she thinks as she stands up and hurries to answer the door.