Still in Bloom

The first daffodil appeared in November.

At first, I thought I was seeing things.

I was standing at the kitchen window with my coffee growing cold between my hands, staring at the little patch of dirt beside the porch. Most of the yard had already surrendered to autumn. Brown leaves crowded against the fence. The maple tree was nearly bare, and the weather report said the temperature would fall below freezing by the weekend.

But there it was.

A thin green stem pushing out of the ground.

At the top was a yellow flower.

A daffodil.

“You’re a little late,” I whispered.

Or maybe it was early.

Either way, it had terrible timing.

I understood the feeling.

My laptop chimed behind me.

For one ridiculous second, my heart jumped.

Maybe it was an employer.

I hurried to the kitchen table and opened the email.

Thank you for your interest in the position. After careful consideration, we have decided to move forward with other candidates.

I didn’t finish reading.

I had learned there was no reason to.

The words changed from company to company, but the message was always the same.

Thank you.

Unfortunately.

Other candidates.

We wish you success.

I closed the laptop.

“Me too,” I said.

The house didn’t answer.

That was something I still wasn’t used to.

For years, silence had been rare.

My son, Danny, had filled the house in ways other people didn’t always understand. He was autistic, and his world had its own rhythms. Some days were peaceful. Some were difficult. Some were both before breakfast.

There were appointments, routines, phone calls, paperwork, sleepless nights and small victories that nobody outside our home would ever know were victories.

I learned which sounds overwhelmed him.

I learned how to recognize the difference between anger and fear.

I learned that sometimes the best thing I could do was talk, and sometimes the best thing I could do was sit nearby without saying anything.

I learned patience because I had to.

Then, after years of caring for him at home, Danny moved into a residential home where he could get the support he needed.

People told me I would finally have time for myself.

They meant well.

What they didn’t tell me was how strange time could feel when you suddenly had too much of it.

The first few mornings after he moved, I still woke up listening.

For footsteps.

For his door.

For his voice.

Then I would remember.

The house wasn’t empty exactly.

I was still in it.

But some mornings, I wasn’t sure who I was supposed to be in it.

So I decided I would work.

It sounded simple.

I had worked before. I knew how to talk to people. I knew how to solve problems. I knew how to be responsible.

More than responsible.

I had spent years handling situations that didn’t come with lunch breaks, paid vacations, or instructions.

Surely that counted for something.

I updated my résumé.

Then updated it again.

I filled out applications.

I created passwords for so many career websites that I started keeping a notebook beside the computer.

I answered questions about my availability, experience, education and skills.

Then came the question I hated.

Please explain any gaps in your employment history.

A gap.

Such a small word.

As if those years had been empty.

As if nothing had happened in them.

I wanted to type:

I was raising my son.

I was taking care of someone who needed me.

I was learning patience and persistence and how to stay calm when everything around me wasn’t.

I was working.

Instead, I wrote something professional.

Full-time family caregiving responsibilities. Now available to return to the workforce.

Then I clicked Submit.

Again.

And again.

And again.

Some companies rejected me.

Most said nothing at all.

Every morning, I checked my email.

Every afternoon, I searched for something new.

Every evening, I told myself tomorrow might be different.

And every few days, I called Danny.

Sometimes he wanted to talk.

Sometimes he didn’t.

Sometimes our conversations lasted twenty minutes.

Sometimes two.

But hearing his voice was enough.

One afternoon, after a particularly bad week of job searching, I walked outside to get the mail.

Bills.

An advertisement.

Nothing else.

On my way back inside, I noticed the daffodil.

It was still there.

The nights had been cold enough for frost. The grass was stiff in the mornings, and my neighbor had already put a plastic snowman on her porch even though Thanksgiving hadn’t arrived.

But that ridiculous yellow flower was still standing.

I crouched beside it.

“You know it’s November, right?”

The daffodil offered no explanation.

“You’re supposed to be here in spring.”

A cold breeze moved through the yard, shaking its petals.

I smiled.

“You don’t care, do you?”

For the next week, checking the flower became part of my morning routine.

Coffee.

Email.

Daffodil.

One morning there would be another rejection.

The flower would still be there.

Another morning my inbox would contain nothing except advertisements.

Still there.

Then, on Thursday, I got an interview.

I read the email three times.

They wanted to speak with me Monday morning.

I immediately started preparing.

I researched the company. I practiced answers to interview questions. I changed my shirt twice before sitting in front of my laptop.

When Monday came, I logged in ten minutes early.

The interview lasted twenty-seven minutes.

I thought it went well.

For the first time in months, someone seemed interested in what I could do instead of what I hadn’t done recently.

The interviewer even said, “Your experience dealing with people really comes through.”

Afterward, I walked outside.

The daffodil was waiting.

“I think I did it,” I told it.

For three days, I allowed myself to imagine having the job.

I imagined waking up with somewhere to be, even if somewhere was a desk in my own house.

I imagined earning my own paycheck again.

I imagined telling Danny.

Most of all, I imagined having an answer when someone asked what I did.

Then the email arrived Thursday afternoon.

We were impressed with your background, but we have decided to pursue another candidate whose recent experience more closely aligns with our needs.

Recent experience.

I stared at those two words until they blurred.

Something inside me broke.

Not loudly.

There were no tears at first.

I just sat there.

I thought about every application.

Every password.

Every résumé revision.

Every form asking me to explain where I had been.

Every cheerful email thanking me for applying before telling me no.

And suddenly I was angry.

I was angry at employers who looked at years of caregiving and saw blank space.

I was angry at myself for believing this interview would be different.

I was angry at the quiet house.

I was even angry at the stupid flower outside.

“What am I supposed to do?” I said aloud.

There was no answer.

That night, the temperature dropped to twenty-three degrees.

The weather report called it an unusually early hard freeze.

Perfect.

Something else happening at the wrong time.

I lay awake longer than I should have.

I thought about Danny.

I thought about work.

I thought about age and time and how easily the world seemed to move forward without asking whether you were ready.

Maybe I had waited too long.

Not because I wanted to.

Because life had required something else from me.

But employers didn’t know that.

They saw dates.

Years.

A gap.

I wondered whether there was a point when starting over stopped being brave and became foolish.

The thought scared me because, for the first time, I almost believed it.

The next morning, frost covered everything.

The grass sparkled white.

Dead leaves had frozen to the driveway.

I made coffee but didn’t open my laptop.

There didn’t seem to be much point.

Instead, I stood at the kitchen window.

Then I remembered the daffodil.

Of course.

I almost laughed.

There was no way it had survived.

I put on my coat and stepped outside.

The cold hit my face immediately.

I walked toward the flower.

Its stem was bent.

One petal had fallen onto the frozen dirt.

Another had curled inward.

The yellow wasn’t as bright as it had been the day before.

But the flower was still there.

I stared at it.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.”

The daffodil leaned sideways beneath a thin crust of frost.

It wasn’t beautiful anymore.

Not in the way flowers in gardening magazines were beautiful.

It looked battered.

Tired.

Completely out of place.

But alive.

I crouched down beside it.

For some reason, tears came then.

Not because of the flower.

Not entirely.

I cried for the years that had passed faster than I realized.

I cried because I missed having Danny home even though I knew where he was now was better for him.

I cried because I didn’t know what came next.

I cried because I was tired of having to prove I still had something to offer.

Then I looked at that bent little flower.

“You’re stubborn,” I said.

I wiped my face.

“So am I.”

When I went inside, I opened the laptop.

There were no miraculous emails waiting.

No employer had suddenly changed their mind.

Nobody offered me a job.

I almost appreciated that.

Life didn’t work like that.

Instead, I opened the job listings.

I found one that looked possible.

Then another.

I applied to both.

The next day, I applied to three more.

Two days later, another rejection arrived.

I deleted it.

Then kept going.

The daffodil stayed too.

Each morning it looked a little worse, but somehow it remained attached to its stem.

A week passed.

Then another.

December came.

The plastic snowman next door no longer looked quite so ridiculous.

One Tuesday morning, my phone rang.

I almost didn’t answer because I didn’t recognize the number.

“Hello?”

“May I speak with Ellen?”

“This is Ellen.”

The woman introduced herself and named a company I had applied to nearly three weeks earlier.

I barely remembered the application.

“We’ve reviewed your résumé,” she said, “and we’d like to know if you’re available for an interview.”

I looked through the kitchen window.

The daffodil was still there.

Barely.

Bent almost to the ground.

But there.

“Yes,” I said.

My voice shook.

I cleared my throat.

“Yes. I’m available.”

We scheduled the interview for Friday.

After I hung up, I didn’t celebrate.

I had learned that an interview wasn’t a promise.

It wasn’t a job.

It wasn’t even a second interview.

It was simply an opportunity.

But opportunities mattered.

I called Danny that evening.

“I have an interview Friday,” I told him.

“Are you nervous?”

“A little.”

“You’ll do good.”

I smiled.

“You think so?”

“Yeah.”

There was a pause.

Then he asked what I was having for dinner.

That was Danny.

No speeches.

No dramatic declarations.

Just certainty followed by dinner.

Friday morning arrived cold and gray.

I dressed carefully.

I checked my hair.

I checked the time.

Then I checked the flower.

The last yellow petal had fallen.

For a moment, disappointment hit me.

After everything, it was finally gone.

Then I looked closer.

The stem was still green.

I smiled.

“All right,” I said. “I get it.”

I went back inside and sat in front of my laptop.

The interview began at ten.

I didn’t know whether they would hire me.

Maybe they would.

Maybe they wouldn’t.

Maybe I would have to fill out twenty more applications.

Maybe fifty.

I couldn’t control that.

But I knew something I hadn’t known a month earlier.

There was nothing empty about the years behind me.

They were not a gap.

They were part of me.

I had spent years learning how to keep going when plans changed, how to listen, how to solve problems, how to be patient, and how to love someone through days that didn’t look the way I expected them to.

No employer could erase that by calling it a gap.

When the interview ended, the woman smiled.

“We’ll be in touch.”

“Thank you,” I said.

And this time, I didn’t try to guess what those words meant.

I closed the laptop and went outside.

The air smelled like winter.

The daffodil’s stem bent toward the frozen ground.

Its season had never come.

Or maybe it had.

Maybe a season wasn’t something the calendar got to decide.

I thought about Danny building a life somewhere new.

I thought about myself trying to do the same.

For years, I had believed my life would begin again when everything was finally settled.

When Danny was settled.

When I found a job.

When someone gave me a chance.

But standing in the December cold, I understood something.

Beginning again wasn’t waiting for me somewhere in the future.

I was already doing it.

I went inside and opened my laptop.

There were more jobs to apply for.

Outside, winter was coming.

And beneath the frost, something was still growing.