Laughing Daffodils by Elizabeth Anna Samudio
The water runs. My bath is drawn. Daffodils in a Lawnmower beer bottle are
laughing. I pour bath foam into the hot water—um, the scent of spring.
I smell the daffodils that sprouted from the bulbs I planted for my husband
just months ago—Winter.
Winter is over now, and daffodils appear like big fat raindrops that fall
from the sky. PLOP. PLOP—then a garden full with laughs.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death you are with me. It is early Spring and feels like Winter. I am standing in Washington state’s Skagit Valley where yellow blooms stretch for miles. My heart and mind sprint down narrow trails. Dead end. Posted. I feel suspended by the unknown. Fear hurts. I have cancer. A thin thread pulls me back inside. “Don’t look so sad,” he says, “it’s gonna be all right.” And my husband takes a snapshot of me. “Yellow means healing; you can do better than that—smile.” I force myself to lift my hands to heaven from where my help comes. With James’ prompting I say, “I’m healed.”
I wish I could escape to childhood memories of capturing wild daffodils with my mother and grandmother. After a long season of short dark days, we’d drive up Lake Louise Road, an aged logging trail wet with Spring—the chill of Winter still lingering in the air. We trampled through an overgrown field of grasses, nettles, and berry vines amidst young elder trees to a deserted homestead. The smell of mildew permeated the emptiness and covered any hint of home, yet the abandoned flowers echoed family.
Ah! The smell of morning dew lightly sweetened with honey flooded my senses, but today shock has dulled the scent that reminds me of the two women I love most. I cry. I don’t want them to suffer loss. And though it has been thirteen years since my mom lost my dad to cancer, I can’t bear the thought of her losing a loved one again.
I can’t escape. I’m not there. I’m here in a dark valley. A valley that stretches so far that the sound of my voice disappears. Cancer lives in me. No place feels safe. “Come here,” he says. I sob in my husband’s arms. I don’t doubt that Jesus lives in him.
I’m sad, sad for the young man I planted daffodils with just last
Winter. We celebrated a ritual we often did when Ethan, my middle son, was
growing up. We planted daffodil bulbs. At eighteen he didn’t ask me, “ Mom,
are you sure these bulbs will grow into flowers—they look so dead.” After
many seasons of seeing God’s handiwork, my son knew the large seed
that looked like a paper rock would change into something beautiful.
A kiss on my forehead. “Are you gonna be okay today?” Back in Fort Worth, a routine of life has returned. “Yes, I’m fine. Really.” He knows I’m telling the truth. I have something up my sleeve. “I need to work all day today, Elizabeth. Call me if you need to, and don’t over-do it.” He doesn’t know that I ordered 50 gladiola bulbs for his 50 th birthday that’s just around the corner. I’m determined. I believe I’ll see every bloom I bury in the earth. I’d better! It’s a lot of work to drag my butt around this garden and bury my hatchet since I am into my 5 th week of chemotherapy and radiation. I am tired, but my soul is at rest. I don’t know exactly how it happened, but slowly and steadily, like the apricot growth from the bulbs of my husband’s favorite late spring bloomer, I entered into peace. I grew.
I take long baths now. I never could before—never was given to long moments of rest. But what can you do when even the thought of activity stirs your insides so that suddenly a feeling much like giving birth starts up, and medication is needed to stop your bowels from going into constant spasms? Not a pleasant thought, but this was my reality—one that made me lean over the toilet, wrenched with pain one night, and recall a story of a women imprisoned and tortured for her faith who endured greater physical pain than I ever will; with her in mind I repeated the words she prayed, “Jesus, help me be a good soldier.” I am not suggesting, nor do I believe, that God signed me up for Cancer 101, but since I live in this imperfect world I, like millions of others, came in contact with a disease. I do, though, strongly believe that God used my circumstance to work something beautiful in my life—rest. One day I hope to capture an aroma so dear to my heart: daffodil, to be poured into baths—the scent of a yellow bloom that this year of my life looks and smells the best it ever has!
The water is still running. It has been a year since I stood in Skagit Valley. And now I am enjoying the daffodils buried through the seasons. Taking a deep breath as I ease into the tub, I smile and enjoy the laughing daffodils from my garden.