June has already passed us by. I remember March seemed to go SOOOO SLOOOOWLYYYY, then April, and May...
By mid-June, we were elbow-deep in New York's "Pause." Thankfully, my family has remained healthy. Marty returned to his janitor job at the local government center, Ellen was enjoying time off - although missing her work at an elementary school - and Tommy was plugging along at his online schoolwork (with some nudges from yours truly).
One day, I walked down the driveway to the mailbox and noticed wild daisies popping up near the road. Every spring in the 20 years we've lived here, I've looked forward to seeing those daisies appear. This year, however, instead of joy, those daisies brought a note of sadness.
You see, each year I've noticed those daisies while one or more of the kids and I were either waiting for the bus to take them to school or while I was waiting in the driveway for the yellow school bus to drop them off. The pretty flowers were the surest sign that school was almost over, and summer fun was about to begin.
I have a picture I need to dig up from when Marty was in elementary school. I remember picking a fistful of daisies and handing them over to him before he boarded the bus, and he proudly presented them to his teacher as one of our end-of-school thank-you gifts. She took his picture and sent it to me: little Marty with a smile, still clutching that fistful of daisies.
This spring, with little to do but stay at home, I've become interested in spring ephemerals and was pleased to find trout lilies and jack-in-the-pulpits growing in our yard. Now that the weather's gotten hotter, I'm more focused on my vegetable garden and my perennials, But my heart is with those daisies, and it longs for those days when their appearance was a sign that better days - not unsure ones- were ahead.
Comments