Texas Bluebonnets

I strolled into the field of Texas bluebonnets and knew that not only had Spring come to Texas, but that I had come home, too. I had forgotten how beautiful they were, how incredibly, impossibly blue. Blue as the sky on a perfect summer’s day. Blue as his eyes.

His eyes. His eyes had haunted me over the years that I had been away. I could never forget them. The love. The joy and hope of the moment: “Will you marry me?”

The disappointment: “No.” The pain.

God, I’d been such a fool! What was I thinking?

I was thinking that I had a career to chase, a career that I would not find here in Texas. I had to go to the Big City. Leave the Texas dust behind, trade the dirt roads of my little town for the concrete jungles of New York City. If I could make it there….

And I did. I did make it there. My career took off like a meteor, like a shooting star, like a jet trail across the Texas sky. I was raking in the money, trading stocks and bonds and commodities. Big money! Beat the other guy to the trade. Seconds count!

I ran at that frenetic pace for nearly two years. All I saw was the dollar signs. All I saw was the next trade. All I saw was the money I was making. The faces of my clients faded out of my awareness, buried in the numbers, drowned in the pool of profits.

Slowly but surely, I traded my soul away, without even noticing.

Until, one day, the house of cards came crashing down. The company I worked for had made the wrong trade for the wrong client, and those laws that they had been bending finally broke. Although I wasn’t, technically, legally liable, the company went belly-up. Its name, once sterling, was now so tarnished that I knew there was no way anyone was going to hire me. Damaged goods. Guilty by association.

So I emptied my cubicle into a cardboard box and ran back to Texas with my tail between my legs. I was on my way home, thinking what on Earth was I going to tell my parents, when this field stopped me in my tracks. So beautiful. So blue! I pulled the car over onto the dusty shoulder of the road and got out. Walked into this field of blue. Drank in the fragrance, the warmth, the blueness. Not just a color, but a comforting blanket that I could wrap myself in and soak up the solace it had to offer. Closed my eyes. Felt the sun on my face, the flowers all around me.

I must have stayed there, cross-legged in the field, for an hour. Time stood still. Then moved backwards. Back to two years ago, when I had walked away from this heaven. Back to Before.

Peace settled over me: the peace of the sun, the peace of the quiet solitude, the peace of this glorious blue field. The peace of coming home to Texas. All it needed to be perfect was….

“Kelly? Kelly Anne?”

I opened my eyes and looked up into his, as blue as the bluebonnets.

“I’m home,” I sighed.