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Perspective: Finding Gifts

Susan Stephens

“Come look!” announced my husband on an early spring morning over a month ago. “I have a surprise!”

I followed him out to the backyard, and there rising up out of the cold brown earth, were a myriad of green stems with sheathed yellow flowers just beginning to make themselves known.

 

“Two hundred daffodils!” my husband beamed brightly. “I planted them last fall in honor of our 50th wedding anniversary. Looks like they made it through the winter.”

Although our 50th anniversary isn’t till June, we had scheduled a celebration trip to the island of Kauai in March, but as the frightening days of the corona virus quickly escalated, that trip was canceled. So many others have had to do the same, canceling weddings, spring breaks, graduations, and sadly, even funerals.

So instead of sitting on a beach looking out at the blue Pacific as a rosy sun slid into the sea, we are sheltered at home looking out the windows to our leafless backyard.

The bright spot, however, is that those 200 daffodils are blooming, and I’m glad I didn’t miss their golden glory.

For no matter where we are sequestered in these pandemic times, each day that the ones we love are still healthy and safe is what makes every moment golden. When I think of that sacred gift, my favorite William Wordsworth poem says it all…

“For oft, when on my couch I lie In vacant or in pensive mood, They flash upon that inward eye Which is the bliss of solitude; And then my heart with pleasure fills, And dances with the daffodils.”

May it be so for all of you.

I'm Marnie O. Mamminga and that's my perspective.

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