Wild Daffodils

I wrote this in the days that followed my first wife's unexpected death. Consider it an experimental offering to the Writer's Cafe

Springtime is almost here in my part of the world and soon the snow will be gone.  The daffodils will begin to bloom and with them I expect many memories will bloom as well.  As the air begins to warm and the winter loses it's grip snow gives way to the green below.  Already the memories, bitter and sweet begin to grow again.

I won't go into a history lesson of the world in which I and my wife raised our young family.  Those of you who were around then will remember the floundering economy and the times of high unemployment.  The years and dates don't matter because they resemble the times we live in today in many ways.  It's a cycle that repeats with monotonous regularity that challenges most of us in our lifetimes.

We lived in a rented apartment in a house the color of brown mustard.  It was dreary looking and ugly on the best of days.  I was laid off from my job and the search for work was depressing.  Hundreds of us were out of work and struggling by on unemployment that winter and early spring.  Our rusty old car wasn't always reliable.  The cupboards were rarely full.  The rest of the details of the life we had aren't all that important because they weren't all that extraordinary compared to so many other families.  We were a young and growing family struggling to survive.

An argument ensued one day over the most trivial of subjects but the stress and fear of the times found an outlet there.  Before any harmful words could be said I recognized the signs and left the house for a walk in the damp cold spring air.  

Wisps of fog hung above the patches of snow still clinging to the sheltered spots.  On the hilltops the wind was brisk, cold and biting as it cut through my clothes.  I walked through the slush and beside the piles of black snow on the roadside heading for no place in particular, just walking and thinking.  The landscape was a reflection of the life within me.  Cold, dirty, frozen, stale.  A chaotic mess left by the ravages of a long winter.

My walk took me to a high part of the city and then around a corner then down one of the steepest, most neglected back streets.  There were no houses along the roadway.  Both sides of the road were wasted land.  On the right the ground fell away steeply to a wooded ravine littered with the carcasses of discarded washing machines, dryers, refrigerators, bald tires, broken televisions, stained mattresses and twisted box springs.  On the left the hill climbed up steeply.  It was spared the castoff junk but was an area thickly wooded and twisted with wild grapevines hanging leafless and dormant among the trees.

My plodding course took me to the bottom of the hill near the railroad tracks where trains no longer ran.  I passed the factories where so little work was being done.  The few people still working in the old buildings were finding parking easy as grass was growing through the cracks in the nearly empty parking lots.  The sour smells were strong around the stacks of wood seasoning outside one of the only furniture factories still working.  Not many people were buying new furniture and the next factory down was making few truck radiators because there weren't as many trucks being built.  The office doors to the largest factories wore signs that apologized but applications for employment were no longer being accepted.  I suppose they didn't have enough people left working in the office to keep throwing them out with the trash.

The wind was biting through my thin jacket but I didn't want to go home just yet.  Home was warmed that day only by the space heater in the living room and the way I was feeling made me think there wasn't a lot of living going on either.  Happiness and it's warmth seemed to be in short supply.  I just kept walking until numbness from the cold started to set in and when fatigue came along I turned around and started back.  The world didn't look any better.  I didn't have any new answers to the situation but I was to tired and cold to fight.

A bit of color caught my eye and I became aware that I had stopped walking and was standing in the street of crumbling asphalt staring at something in the woods.  Among the tangled gray branches and vines there were patches of daffodils growing wild.  They were early and brave flowers that had somehow struggled up from the barely thawed ground.  I stepped closer for a better look.  Daylight was fading and taking any little bit of color with it yet those flowers seemed so bright.  They had a way of catching even the tiniest bit of color the weak sun had to offer and brightening the space around them with it.

I felt like I might have been stealing those flowers when I cut them off and carried them away because there was an old house nearby.  I would have asked permission but the old house looked so run down and forlorn I doubted anyone lived there.  The mailbox was knocked askew and it's rusty hatch was hanging by one corner.   Snow drifted up against the front door was undisturbed by any signs of footprints or shoveling.  The windows were all dark.

The flowers were less perfect than shop purchased ones would be.  The petals were tainted with brown on some of the edges.  They showed signs of having been frozen and thawed yet that color was warm and sunny.  I looked for the best of the ones growing there but none were perfect.  I only cut a few and left plenty behind.  I wish I could explain the mechanism by which they affected me but I can't explain it anymore than I can explain magic.  Something about them gave me hope.  Perhaps it was just the color of them or the bravery they showed in poking up through the snow.  It may have been the way the imperfections seemed to mirror real life that caused me to connect with them.   Even now as I think back the image is like a photograph all in dark grayscale except for the bright yellow of the flowers.  I carried them back home and offered them as a sign of peace and hope.  I thought them to be a sign that somehow there would be spring, the world would get warm again, and that things just couldn't stay ugly forever.

Many years have passed since those first daffodils in those hard times.  There have been more hard times and there have been many more daffodils.  They still represent the promise of beauty and hope for the future to me.  Each spring I look forward to seeing them blooming once again.

In April of 2009 they were important to me again.  They are bittersweet memories.  On my way to the funeral home I stopped at a flower shop where we bought flowers for our wedding in 82.  The bell over the door announced my arrival and the florist stopped what she was doing to attend to my needs.  I told her  what I needed.  She looked at me oddly so I explained.  I needed three daffodils if they had any.  Two white and one yellow but I didn't need the greens, or the wrapping paper.  My wife had died and I wanted to send her away with them in her hands, a yellow one for our son and a white one each for of the girls.  

The lady at the shop wouldn't take any money from me that day but handed over the best of her flowers and quietly sent me on my way.  I tried to pay her for them once again but she wordlessly gestured towards the door with a nod of her head.  Before I even left the shop she had turned away and was paying close attention to the floral arrangement she had been working on when I rang the bell with my arrival.

I wonder now if life has come through a circle for me and begun another loop because of the strange way things came together.  The house where we lived in 2009 didn't exist all those years ago when I first cut the daffodils to carry home.  What is now a large and beautiful lawn was once littered with the castoff junk along the side of a steep, rarely used street. The railroad tracks that sat idle and rusting are alive again with the passing of trains the are like music to my soul.  The old house that looked abandoned all those years ago is only three houses away and it's rusty mailbox still sits askew on the post beside the street, the hatch is missing entirely.  I wonder if I were to scuff around at the base of the post if the rusty remains of that hatch might still be laying there.  I still doubt if anyone lives there, I don't think so.  Nobody ever mows the lawn or shovels the snow and the shredded plastic over the dark windows blows in the cold wind.  Each spring the wild daffodils still bloom.

A part of town that once seemed so desolate was my home.  My lawn is frequented by deer, woodchucks and rabbits.  A few seasons ago there were wild turkeys in abundance until a red fox started to make itself well known.

I stepped out of the side door and listened to the water rushing in the creek and the drip of ice melting on the house.  The distant cry of a hawk caught my attention for a moment but I couldn't find it there in the sky.

I can't say I know what it all means but I can say that when the wild daffodils bloom I still believe and hope.

Author's Note

If you find yourself interested or even curious about my writing, my "introduce yourself" note to the cafe explains a little more.

This is a new thing for me. I usually post things where the readers are better known and still feel among strangers here.