I love the tulips; don't get me wrong. What I really can't wait each year for, though, is my daisies. As April rolls into May each spring, I find myself hanging around my daisies more often, willing those little stems to shoot up buds, and then willing those promising little buds to show me what's inside. Every year I count on those daisies, and they never disappoint. They mean so much to me, in fact, that I have told BJ that if we ever move to another home (a thought that breaks my heart even to consider!), half of those daisies are coming with us.
The nostalgia behind those daisies is incredible for me. I remember well the evening of May 4, 2010. BJ and I came home from the hospital late that afternoon with our first newborn, a little guy named Silas. I was already deeply in love with him, and I relish even now the promise that that evening held--an entire lifetime to come with this amazing little boy. I felt terrified, yet on top of the world. That first night, though, I might have been mostly terrified. Because of that, BJ's mom Susan came to spend the night with us. She had a dinner engagement with her job, but once it was over in the early evening, she came to our house toting an air mattress, a tray of leftover food from the shindig, and a bucketful of daisies from her yard. I sat on the grey sectional in our living room, looking out our large front window and smelling my sweet new baby, as I watched BJ and his beloved mother plant those daisies in our front garden. It is perhaps the sweetest memory of my entire life.
Daisies are perennials, destined to come back each year, and for that I am so grateful. That means that every May, I get to look at our beautiful, humble garden and remember with swells in my heart what it felt like to have a new baby, a devoted husband, and a mother-in-law-turned-mother who would give her time, efforts, and love to her son, his wife, and her new grandson. Later that evening we all watched YouTube tutorials on how to swaddle a baby, and we all laid Silas down in his crib together. I remember Susan telling me to go to sleep and get some rest, and I asked with trepidation as I looked at that tiny being in that huge crib, "Are you sure there is no way he can die tonight like this?" She reassured me that Silas was fine, and then she met me in the living room during each nursing session that night to talk to me while I fed Silas, and then she put him back to sleep while I rested. It was the first night that she stayed, but it was by far not the last.
Last weekend, my first daisy opened. Then another, and another the next day. Silas excitedly ran to me last night and announced that five daisies are now in full bloom. The same little boy that snuggled sleeping in my arms five years ago now races on big-boy legs to tell me the big news...
The daisies have bloomed.
