I see them each evening as the car slows and the garage door raises. I see the gold and black ribbons on the steel kite the Theta's sent and my eyes rest just beyond on the new green.
Honestly, I love daffodils. I look forward to their droopy yellow heads every spring, but when I see them I think, "How dare you."
I know their resilience should be a metaphor for renewal. I know you want me to write about that, and I wish I could. I can write about getting up every morning and doing what is before us. I can write about feeling warm when my boy ducks his head near my face so I can kiss his cheek. I can write about the completeness I sense when he says, "Ma, will you make skillet queso?" I can write about the tears that fill my husband's eyes when the emptiness that accompanies each of us meets and its weight pulls at our wound until our eyes seep. I can write about how sadness ambushes me when people are kind, but I can't write about renewal, yet.
That spring would come means that there is hope somewhere. I want to be like the daffodils confidently waiting for the warmth of tomorrow to melt the frozen earth around me. It's hard not to just see the cold snow - all the events that will never occur - all of the future days without her. I struggle against the constant sadness and the knowledge that this is not how she would live. I want to be like the daffodils and be a new green, a new joy despite the loss. So as soon as I say, "How dare you." I pause and say, "but I hope so."
"Hope is a thing with feathers
That perches in the soul,
And sings the tune without the words,
And never stops at all." Emily Dickinson
"For I know the thoughts that I have for you, says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give a future and hope." Jeremiah 29:11
Funny, this has been our family verse for as long as we have been a family and we have stood upon it, but today it means something completely different.
The sun will be out tomorrow, and the last of the snow will leave.
We can only hope.
#golighttheworld