The Wildflowers

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The Wildflowers

“There is magic all around us,” her mother would say when they went on their walks together.

She didn’t really believe, though. She said she could see it. She said she could feel it. But she couldn’t. No harm in make believe, she would think, but she was talking about her mother’s make believe not hers. She was a more practical sort, a more show-me kind of girl. 


“There, Sandra, can you see it? Can you see it in those flowers,” her mother would say as she pointed to a stand of purple wildflowers.


“Yes, mommy. Yes, I see it,” she said as excited as her make believe would allow. But all she saw was a bunch of green with purple tops. Not big blooms with wide petals like the tulips, but tiny little bursts of purple. Not the deep purple you see on pansies but a redder purple like an orchid.


“There, Sandra, that bird, can you see it? Can you see the magic?”


“I see it, mommy. I see the magic.”


But she never saw the magic. She just saw some broken light blue eggshells and a robin flying up to its nest to feed the hatchlings. 


And then all the magic left the world. The disease was fast. She got sick, she went to the hospital, she never came home. Her mother was gone. Sandra had never experienced sorrow so deep. The sadness filled her like water filling the lungs of a drowning person and she knew at that moment there was never magic in the world.

Many years later, Sandra was walking through the park with her daughter. She saw a field of wildflowers. Purple, pink, white, and yellow filled her senses. She saw the colors, not the muted pastels of stodgy gardens, but vibrant and vital. She heard the breeze rustle the tops of the flowers. She smelled the earthy sweetness of the buds. She could almost taste the sugary nectar the bees were collecting as they buzzed by choice flowers. 

“Can you see it, Ella,” she asked her own daughter. “Can you see the magic?”


“Yes, mommy. I see it,” said the girl, a big smile on her face, a little jump in her step, excitedly pointing to the field of flowers.


And she could.



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