Her Golden Years

She’s sitting in the garden, in the same spot she always likes to be, staring at the flowers. Although she does see the beauty in the entirety of the display, she plants herself here for one particular flower, the marigold. The marigold flower is the true reason she’s here. In all honesty, the violets, roses, tulips, nasturtiums, and whatever else they choose to plant here throughout the warmer months are nothing to her but a passing joy that one gains from any other meaningless small ephemeral beauty that one encounters along one’s journey. She appreciates them for what they are, flowers; however, the marigolds are much more than that.

The marigolds bring her back to her childhood. Those glorious golden petals twist and turn around the centerpoint of the flower just like her memories as she gazes out upon them. Instantly, she’s back in her youth, running around out in the yard as her mother tends to her garden, calling out, “take care not to step on my marigolds!” She can feel the sunshine on her face, the breeze through her hair, the fresh air, the feeling of summer and the warmth of it all. She hears the laughter of young children playing and tastes the oh-so-sweet tartness of hand-picked blackberries from your own yard. The thorns always get you at least a few times, even if you are overly cautious. The most delicate and slender of all picking wrists receive a scratch or two, and the times when you are in more of a rush because it’s getting dark, or the mosquitos are particularly vicious, or the sky is about to open up and pour, the scratches are up and down your arms - those ones sting! - and you get caught by the hair and clothes from all angles. You have to laugh about it and hold on tight to those crimson-juiced, dark, shining treasures. Thankfully they aren’t as easily squishable as the black raspberries that came earlier in the season, which are known to stain a hand for several hours, at least.

Nothing is more precious than these sweet memories. This place in time when everything feels perfect is one from which she never wants to return. She didn’t know it at the time, but the effort her mother put into those golden balls of sunshine was due to the sweet place they held in her memory from her own youth, helping in and playing around her own mother’s garden. Marigolds were always her mother’s most prized flower out of the wide array of blossoming plants that she nurtured in her green space. Her heart always held on to this fondness and, unknowingly, she passed the love down to her own daughter.

It’s funny how this deep love for the plant went unspoken for many years, until the two of them discussed the significance of the flower quite a bit later, when her mother noticed them in her home garden. She pointed them out and how beautifully they were growing, noting how the love must run in the family. When her daughter inquired as to what she meant, she told her the story of her mother’s garden, and her grandmother’s garden, and her great grandmother’s before her. She described the beauty, in detail, of each of these from her own memory, and went on to talk about the ones she was told stories about that were said to have come before them. She shared how her first memory was one of her sitting beside the flowers when she was just a toddler, and being unable to resist their golden charm, she reached out and gently petted their soft petals. That moment felt like nirvana, and it always stuck with her. Upon hearing this story, the woman smiled, because it was nearly identical to her own first memory. This rendezvous, in the warmth of the summer sun, beside her current marigold garden, when her and her mother came to this realization just as a butterfly was landing on one of the flowers, is another place that she goes when she spends time surrounded by the golden petals.

She wants to stay in this peaceful bliss forever. There’s no reason she would ever willingly leave, that is, without resistance. Inevitably, however, she is disrupted by someone or another who says it’s time to go inside for some activity in which she has no interest in taking part, or that someone is there to visit. She begrudgingly will do these obligatory tasks when the time comes that she is pulled back into the present again, but for now she’d rather not remember that she’s wheelchair-bound, or that she’s in this institution, unable to plant and tend to a garden of her own anymore. She lets these unwelcome, unpleasant realities wash away and spends as much of her time as possible living in the times in her life that bring her joy, and these marigolds are the form of transportation that bring her there.

Thankfully, she passed this love down to her own daughters, granddaughters and great granddaughters, because she doesn’t know what she’d do in the winter without them. The one saving grace of the moments she is pulled out of her blissful state back into the current reality is the visits with her daughters. Each time one of them visits, they bring her a new joy to brighten up her world. Her room is filled with embroidery, paintings, drawings, watercolors, quilts, and any other feasible artistic expression that one can think of all celebrating and showcasing marigolds. The honor for these simple golden flowers that the newer branches of her family tree display is what brings her joy today. It keeps her going each day and she couldn’t be more grateful for the sunshine that they provide in the cold winter months and the dark, rainy days when she cannot be in the presence of the live ones. She doesn’t want to think about it anymore right now though. She watches the butterflies dance from one bloom to another, she closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, inhaling the scent that most soothes her, and returns to her happy place.