I so love this flower. My great grands were share croppers and my great grandmother would plant big bright yellow daffodils at every house the family would move to. She would fill her apron with the bulbs she had lifted before each move and she would stand at the front door and flip them out. Wherever they landed, that is where she would plant them. Then she would go to the back door and do the same thing. She did not pass until I was in college, so I was blessed to actually know my great grandmother, Pearl Campbell Jones. Now, when I turn on to DeArmanville Road, I search for those hardy, joyful little beacons of hope, that Miss Pearl planted oh, so many decades ago. I get to see them every year, and I smile, because they trigger memories that death and time can not steal. Memories of a tiny smiling Southern Lady, standing with a long white apron tied around her waist and hanging almost to the ground, of a headful of raven black hair knotted at the nap of her neck... even in her 90s it had only turned white near her scalp. When she would let it down, it would drop below her waist ...a waist widened from birthing a large family ..and that beautiful black hair with its white ring would look like a white halo, or tiara, around her wide, intelligent, barely wrinkled forehead. I always picture that tiny little 4 foot 8 inch woman busy. When these flowers start pushing so determinedly out of the hard ground, my mind turns to her. I see her standing at that old wooden stove, I can see her take the towel, double it up around those tiny calloused hands, and remove the BEST cathead melt- in -your -mouth biscuits from that old stove. She made multiple pans of them each morning. She kept the extras in the warmer at the top of the stove. Someone was always stopping by and they usually wanted one slathered with her own churned melted butter, sorghum syrup, or some of her blackberry jelly. I see her sweeping her yard, yes, sweeping ...with a broom she had constructed herself. Her feelings about grass in the yard was simple ... she did not like it! Because if it didnt bloom, or produce something edible, or was useful for medicinal purposes, then it did not need to be in her yard! My minds eye can still see her each morning as she placed a blue and grey enamel ware basin on a little wooden shelf with a tiny mirror nailed above it. There was a L shaped porch off of the dogtrot and this is where her George, with his suspenders hanging down shaved. She would pour steaming hot water from a black cast iron kettle into that basin as her husband sharpened his old yellow tan colored straight edge switch blade by passing it back and forth with many licks on the old leather strap that hung nearby. I can see her standing over a huge black pot which hung over a fire in the back yard. She would be making soap by boiling ashes from the fire place and stirring it all with a hand made boat oar. Busy, always busy, thats how I remember her, until after George would go into the woods or the fields. Then after chores were done, she would sit down, quietly reach under her long skirt, unroll her knotted knee high stocking and she would retrieve her most prized possession. It was a tiny Bible she kept hidden from a not yet believing husband. She was a scholar concerning The Book. She had studied its words so much that the little book was worn and its pages fanned out as wide as the little Bible was tall. Neighbors, friends, and yes, many young preachers would come and sit on that porch to listen to her share the glories and goodness of her LORD. You stayed on the porch, men did not enter the home of a Lady when her husband was not home. It just was not done back then. That same husband was in the fields, woods, hunting, fishing, trapping, or maybe just whistling a little tune from old Scotland. He would come to know the LORD, after years and years of her sincere prayers. He would eventually begin to preach and he would still sing, dance a little jig, and jump higher flat footed at age 90 than most people can in their youth. She smiled, she whispered, she planted seeds of cotton, corn, zinnias, and always daffodil bulbs. She was beautiful and bright, and always so full of HOPE. She left proof of that HOPE in the lives of her children, her grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. ....and blooming along side Buckhorn and DeArmanville Roads. A brown, seemingly insignificant little bulb when placed in the hard dark ground, left alone to experience a cold winter season, watered with rain, covered in ice and snow, and then applied with sunshine, will break open, and then push and push its new growth through that ground until it breaks forth and points to the sky. Looks like HOPE, RESURRECTION, and a new LIFE to me ! I do so love DAFFODILS!
Posted on: Tue, 11 Mar 2014 16:16:00 +0000
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