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| The daffodils behind the garage |
This past February 20, between snow and
ice storms, a friend emailed, “My narcissus are popping up, the little stinkers!”
Amused
by her sentiment, and happy to oblige a truthful report, I replied, “And my
daffies are popping up, the little stinkers!”
For
I keep a patch of yellow daffodils behind the garage for this very purpose.
Within view from the kitchen’s sliding glass door, they snuggle the garage and pea
gravel border of our backyard patio. Often before the snow melts, their shoots
drill through the soil to my applause.
My dependable showoffs,
the daffies think they’re in the Mediterranean and usually bloom for my first
Lenten bouquet. I’ll sometimes cut a magnolia branch and include it with the
daffodils in a vase indoors and force the buds to open.
White Helleborus bloom, now covered with the last snowfall.
Although my Helleborus
bloom first in winter, their short stems and white flowers seem too shy and
matronly to consider them “little stinkers.” There’s not a narcissistic gene in
the Helleborus.
Indeed, Nancy, a
fellow writer and gardener, revived in her email the endearment I used for my
three girls while changing their diapers. Cloth diapers. Although Pampers
appeared on the market in 1961, most young mothers of my means considered disposable
diapers a luxury—and pun intended, a waste of money.
From the moment
our third-born and baby could walk, she spontaneously performed fashion shows for
every guest who entered our front door. Between wardrobe changes, she appeared
in her diaper to the provocation of a unanimous, “What a little stinker!”
Today, she remains
our family’s fashionista, her shoe and clothes closet the size of a small
boutique.
As my children
grew, I cheered them on in their passion to cross the finish line first, jump
the highest pole vault, achieve academic awards, star as lead roles in high school
plays, and design the latest fashion.
In a recent phone
call from California, my second daughter used, “the stinker,” in reference to her
eighteen-year-old son. I remembered my eighteenth year, the awkward and
unprepared passage into the age of accountability and sensibility.
I remembered my
daughter’s eighteenth year away at Alma College, responsible beyond her years.
Lastly, I
considered my grandson, a young man taking his studies seriously as a student
of Wayne State University, adapting well as a transplant into a different
culture and city scape. Like narcissus, he’s driven to be first.
Now, being the
second born of five daughters, striving for first place never crossed my mind.
However, I achieved the highest score in cheerleading tryouts between my
freshman and sophomore year in high school. One of the judges volunteered the
information, otherwise I would’ve never known.
Oh, and in 2013 my
lavender farm received the Keep Michigan Beautiful Award for my “outstanding
contribution to beautification.”
Dear Reader,
nonetheless, a good friend claims I’m “a stinker” whenever I tease her about
working every job but prostitution to support her domestic hobbies and
charitable donations.
I take it as a
term of endearment.
