Heralds of Spring

After weeks of the cold, dark hibernation season, nature is desperate for signs of awakening. Longing for a sign that the collective rest and restoration has been for a purpose: to rouse with a brightness more vibrant and alive than before the dormancy began. As will all things, nature gives the weary and cold survivors of winter the perfect herald to announce the coming rebirth and hope, the daffodil.

Bright and stark against the barren brown and grey, the resilient daffodil makes its impressive cresting through the hard ground of late February. For centuries, the daffodil has symbolized revival, rebirth, hope, joy, resilience, good luck, and prosperity since the yellow trumpet blooms are among the first we see after months without color. It is a delicate flower with a contrasting level of resiliency that is so potent and long-lasting that historians and archeologists even use the seemingly random patch of daffodils as a sign of a long-gone homestead or primitive settlement.

Daffodils have always held a sacred garden plot in my heart. My late grandmother, Joyce, loved daffodils. She gave me so much of what makes me the woman I am today, but I find myself most grateful for her whimsy, wonder, and appreciation of beauty. Grandma decided to plant her daffodil patch tucked away in a simple spot behind their barn, long emptied the inhabitants it had protected for generations and usefulness forgotten. By this, I mean she told her sweetheart that was where she wanted a daffodil patch, so he happily tilled the soil and planted them for his life-long love to enjoy.

Like all spaces Southern women love, she was compelled to adorn this spot with her own touches and flares. So she nailed one piece of wood to another in a “T” shape and, with whatever paint she had lingering in some corner storage and, painted “daffodil patch” on her makeshift sign. There was no Pinterest to consult. There was no aesthetic to boast about to others on social media, just a country woman wanting to make her home her own.

I can still see her now, sitting in her chair next to her sweetheart in front of her daffodil patch, me and other cousins gathered around on the freshly cut grass around them, her head thrown back in a larger-than-life laugh at some story that had no doubt has been told dozens of times before with details growing grander with each retelling.

Joyce left this world with a satisfied mind on March 4, 2019, just in time for her beloved daffodils to bloom. Every March, when I feel the grief start tightening in my chest and lining my eyes with silver, I walk around the side of my home to the carefully selected spot I chose for my daffodil patch and think of all the bright and hopeful things about her. The things she taught me and how much of herself I carry on.

When the time came to move on to the next chapter and sell her family farm in Cottontown, TN, there was one priceless object that I absolutely had to have. The simple sign Grandma made to denote her special spot. So now, in my new home on the water beside the Tennessee River, I have my very own daffodil patch, with a sign from the other side that new beginnings are just around the corner.