Blog 547 – 02.16.2017

The First Daffodil

For as long as I can remember the first daffodil has been the herald of spring for me. Much as I love snow and winter after several months of winter and cold temperatures I am as ready as anyone else for the new life of spring. Daffodils are always one of the first signs of spring. Their beautiful yellow bells ring in the true new year. Not the cold winter one in January but the budding new life one in spring.

I love roses and posies, lilacs and lillies but none I appreciate more than the first daffodil. It is a promise of so much more to come. The trees put on their new bright green dresses and the butterflies and bees flutter and buzz about everywhere. The birds build nests and as the ole saying goes in the spring a young man’s fancy turns to thoughts of love and young women too and those of us not so young as well.

The first daffodil is that first kiss that promises the dream of spring is on its way. Our lives are lived in cycles and the seasons all remind us that the circle of life continues to turn all around us. Even people who are not fans of winter as I am take heart when they see spring is almost here. And summer lovers relish the spring too and as the days get warmer the dream of swimming and boating and lying around and playing in the warm sun fill their heats with hope.
And hope springs eternal with every daffodil.

Life, if we will let it, will remind us that there is so much more to enjoy and to look forward to in each coming day. Like most of you I too have experienced the cold gray days that seemed to linger and would steal the warmth from our heart. But I know the fire of light and love that burns in my heart and every heart can keep us warm throughout even a long winter. I welcome the first daffodil and rejoice as the earth, our mother, puts on her Easter bonnet and adorns herself in all her spring finery. I am reminded of a song from the nineteen sixties, “If you are going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” For years I have practiced karaoke sets in case I get an opportunity to sing and I usually end after five or ten songs (I love to sing even more than I love to talk or to write) with one of my very favorite song, San Francisco, made popular by Tony Bennett. It begins, “The loveliness of Paris seems somehow sadly gay, the glory that was Rome, is of another day. I’ve been terribly alone, and forgotten in Manhattan. I’m going home to my city by the Bay. I left my heart in San Francisco.”

For most of us who spent a year of our young lives in South Vietnam San Francisco was not only our departure point but our first taste of home coming back, much like that first daffodil of spring. I hope to see San Francisco again someday and I may not be wearing flowers in my hair but I will be in my heart, daffodils. Spring is coming, friends.

Your friend and fellow traveler,
David White