day 10

the best layed plans ... been out of the loop just a bit - but hopefully i'm back in the message game

day 10

She hadn’t expected these sorts of memories to come flooding in but she shouldn’t have been surprised. As the rain fell she remembered the spring that they had planted so many radishes. They grew in 3 weeks almost too long for the patience of a 4 year old. Mother had made radishes a hundred different ways that year. That had been the year that Elsa had first fallen in love with gardening.
As the low hanging clouds made her think of the autumn of her 18th year when she had first fallen in love. The smell of the earth in the apple orchard, laying under the trees, on a wool blanket and looking up at the harvest moon hoping that the winter would never come.
She remembered another fall as well. The year her dad came down with cancer. She had planted 300 daffodils in the yard. Believing that just the expectation of them blooming in the spring just might keep him alive longer than the doctor’s had predicted. She had been right too, they had said he wouldn’t last the winter but it wasn’t until the middle of April he had passed. The last daffodil had died and two days later he had gone.
The smell of jasmine floated in the breeze. The singing was almost over. People had stood waiting in the rain and she knew it was her turn. She stepped forward and then she bent down, reaching into the pocket of her long raincoat. She pulled out a small trowel and scooped up a small amount of dirt. This should have been the spring of radishes. She placed the dirt on the tiny coffin. Tears falling down her face, she would never have imagined that she would be planting her four year old in the ground.