Burst of Yellow

I’m waiting and hoping. I am hoping that I get to see the daffodils in my front yard this year. I didn’t get to see them last year. In fact, I don’t think I saw daffodils growing anywhere last year. I bought a few at the Brookings Hy-Vee.

I absolutely love daffodils or as some southerners mistakenly call them, Butter Cups. I had a friend who passed away recently who could really drag out her sounds. I think every time I think of daffodils I will think of her saying buuuhtur-Kuups.  You’d have to hear her to appreciate it. She had this deep guttural southern accent. I miss her. She was always funny, direct and yet sensitive. I thought of her as a “steel magnolia.” Joined with her Mama and Sissy, they were a trinity of fierce strength and intimidation.

We didn’t have many flowers in our backyard in Brooklyn. A blue hydrangea bush and some roses were all I remember clearly. The roses were over a pergola as I recall. Our Italian neighbor had a beautiful flower garden. Its beauty rivaled the famous botanical garden in Brooklyn. I remember as a child being under strictest of orders to look and not touch. I do remember that our neighbor once gave me an exquisite rose.

It wasn’t in a yard that I saw my first daffodil. It was a Sunday afternoon in early spring in Brooklyn. I must have been around ten. If I had seen a daffodil before, I don’t remember. I turned a corner on a residential street and there stood this vendor of beauty. I encountered a man with a huge bouquet of daffodils. It astounded me. I had never seen anything so beautiful. I wanted those flowers.

I remember I had some money. I asked him how much he wanted. He told me and I bought some. I don’t remember how many, but I do remember I justified my purchase by giving the flower to my mother. While appreciative, I don’t think she fully appreciated that I would forever be in love with the color yellow and with daffodils.

The daffodils are out of the ground in my front yard in Tennessee but I do not know if I will see them bloom. I suspect that I will miss them again this year.  They are late because of the snow. 

Like me, they are resilient. I will push through this snow and bloom, even in South Dakota. I have resisted being planted in South Dakota. Perhaps though, this period of dormancy will soon be over. Then, like the daffodil bulb, I will burst open, even in the snow. 

It seems the storehouse of snow is unrelenting this year. It has followed me to middle Tennessee.  I want a break from the snow and cold. I want to see daffodils. I want to be astonished by a burst of yellow.