tradition

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For Mother's Day, when I was around ten-years-old, I picked my Mom a bouquet of oxeye daises. She oohed and aahed and I got major pointage. Thus, a family tradition was born.

And almost every year since, I've taken her more daises, fistfuls, jars full, by now, probably several thousand oxeyes have graced the table by the picture window in the livingroom of the house I grew up in, the house she still lives in, the house that holds all my childhood memories that go back to Kennedy's Camelot. 

At some point, after completing college and getting a real job, daises seemed too cheap a gift, so they were replaced with a dozen pink roses.

"Where are my daises?" She queried, almost incensed!

"Oh, Mom, it just didn't seem right to just bring flowers I collected along the roadside. A little too Tom Sawyerish. You deserve more," I returned. "You're my Mom. I've grown up."

"But, I liked knowing you had made the effort; cut 'em yourself," she replied. "I like the hand-picked ones."

"OK. I understand, I'm not THAT grown up. It's the thought that counts and all that."

And the tradition continued as one decade gave way to another to another. In this, I remained a ten-year-old.

Some years, it was a real scramble because oxeye daises were only beginning to bloom by mid-May. But this year, probably yet another sign of climate change, the yellow-centered composites—the "he loves me, he loves me not flower"—began blooming three weeks ago and most have already come and gone. But, not all.

This morning, in the rain, along John Sevier Highway, I found enough fresh ones to make a modest, albeit damp, bouquet. The tradition lives on and another fistful was successfully delivered.

Happy Mother's Day to all Moms, especially you Mary Helen.

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