The Magic Sunflower

Reassurance from the Great Mystery

Several times in the past couple of months, I’ve peered anxiously out a window to the backyard to see my mother struggling with some crazy, gas-guzzling piece of lawn machinery.

Or she might be wrangling impossibly large boards. Panels of corrugated metal. A wheelbarrow heaped high with mulch.

And almost every time, my brothers stand outside with her, helping when they can or backing off when she says she can do it herself.

She can do it herself. But all three of us hate that she has to.

My mother has had the worst spring of her life. The worst time of her life. And honestly, it’s right up there for my brothers and me, too.

Mom’s husband of nearly 30 years - so much more than a stepdad; a man I’ve called “Dad” for 17 of my 41 years - died in April.

These things happen, of course: None of us gets out of here alive! But Dad's death was unusually sudden.

He was being discharged from the hospital several days after successful surgery when tragedy struck the day before Easter.

We didn’t focus much on rebirth, on renewal, on life after death that holiday. But maybe we should have.

Now that the hideous tide of administrative tasks has ebbed a bit, my mom can make time for what renews her: gardening.

As an inveterate overachiever and certified Master Gardener, she and Dad created a dizzying area of beds and furrows where once there was a pool. Heady flowers and herbs in her potager make their way into tinctures, bath and spa products, teas, supplements, and meals; vibrant tomatoes, cukes, and squash go into classic Ball canning jars and sit proudly on the shelves until called into service on Keto Pasta Night, for a snack of chips and salsa, or when a pickle craving hits.

If that weren't enough, gorgeous flowers fill every room of the house with delicate, summery scent.

Right now, lilies are in bloom.

Though it’s a bit bewildering to me, a city kid through and through, my mother didn’t have that concrete-based childhood. And I see the garden complex as a tiny bit of our family’s Civil War-era Quaker farm heritage alive and well in the 2020s.

The other evening, I sat at a picnic table on the deck, absently reading as the light changed. I looked up at our family’s miniature Bernerdoodle, Eliza, as she grunted, nosing through chicken wire at something at the back of the yard - at the site of a burrow where baby bunnies had huddled a month before.

“Ahh-ahh-ahh!” I called reflexively. Hearing her “No!” command, she jumped away.

That’s when I noticed one solitary sunflower.

Most of it in shadow, the setting sun cast its Golden Hour on the golden flower. It looked virtually afire, and despite the pull of my book, I got up and walked out to it to take a photo.

I hadn’t known there were sunflowers here! My mother had mentioned planting them for my brother, who loves them - but I thought she’d planted them at his house.

But as I lined up and took each shot, I grew frustrated.

To my eye, the sky was a clear baby blue, fading to pale yellow. Yet each photo I took showed an awkward beam of sunlight filtering down right to the flower. I tried and tried, but nothing changed.

The photo wasn’t easy to look at, so I didn’t post it. A few minutes later, I called Eliza and we went inside.

But a few days later, Mom read me the draft of her Friday essay. To my surprise, it was about the sunflower.

To my surprise, Mom explained that no one had planted sunflowers this year. Furthermore, the one flower was growing in Dad’s garden: Both of my parents were Type A leader personalities, and they tended separate areas plotted to their own specifications.

I frantically fished through my photos to show my mom the sunbeam. She studied it, then looked away.

“I’ll send it to you,” I said quickly.

And she used it at the end of her piece - which was about working on the same project in separate phases. This was a smart workaround for two people who wanted to row together, but who each naturally took charge in other areas of life.

It gripped me: that sunbeam streaming down over the lone flower, unplanted, in a garden not tended since its owner passed away.

How could I have thought the photo was flawed?

Now, of course there is a sound biological explanation for this. The sunflower had simply been a volunteer - a plant that crops up from an errand seed somewhere nearby, not down intentionally, but certainly a welcome surprise.

It happens!

But for those of us who believe in something more - not rejecting science, but believing science is the process by which the Great Mystery carries out its will - there is comfort here.

And so, months after Dad’s death, my parents are still working together in the garden.

I needed this reminder that, like the flower, I can still turn my face to the sun and have it absorb radiant, healing Light.

Maybe I’ll even be lucky enough to show someone else a direct line to something more.