IMG_0178 - Copy

This week our family celebrates Peggy’s birthday. With winter lingering the arrival of her special flower is delayed, but its significance is seldom absent whatever the month.

Daffodils have accompanied our life together, the gift of a Limeliters’ song some fifty years ago.

I do not have a mansion. I haven’t any land. Not one paper dollar to crinkle in my hand. But I can show you morning on a thousand hills, kiss you and give you seven daffodils.

I do not have a fortune to buy you pretty things, but I can give you moonbeams for necklaces and rings. And I can show you morning on a thousand hills…

Seven golden daffodils shining in the sun, light our way to evening when the day is done. And I can give you music and a crust of bread, a pillow of piney boughs to rest your head.

With the color of sunlight and its cyclical profusion this simple flower reminds us of earth’s bounty and the life-giving riches that sustain body and soul.

The romantic dreams and meager means of youth have seasoned. We saved a few paper dollars and with the generosity of many acquired some land. The home built by friends and our sons is a mansion to us. Each morning the view encompasses several hills. Music and singing join our three generations. Peggy’s home baked bread nourishes us well beyond the crust of necessity. Now a perch for resting birds, the piney boughs wave above their hillside neighbors.

Most amazing, perhaps, is the bouquet pictured above. It greeted us as we arrived on the land the spring we broke ground. There were no other flowers in sight. Their origin remains a blessed mystery, as does the fortune we celebrate this April birthday.