The Power of One Daffodil

Daffodils are an iconic symbol of spring here in the South.

According to the Historical Marker Database (hmdb.org) of local, national, and global history, these beautiful yellow flowers have been a part of our nation since the colonists carried the bulbs with them to the New World in the early 1600s. Native to Northern Africa and parts of Europe, it was the Roman conquerors who first brought daffodils to our British founders in AD 43. Truly, this flower has been appreciated by countless people for thousands of years.

For me, though, those beautiful yellow blossoms hold a lifelong meaning that is hard to explain. They are not just my favorite flowers; they speak loudly of my childhood, my marriage, and my years as a mother and grandmother.

Maybe it all started when my daddy brought me my first handpicked bouquet of flowers, which I called “buttercups” for most of my life. Or maybe I associated their blooming with my springtime birthday. I do recall thinking they were my flowers, created especially for me.

Whatever the case, every spring for 64 years, I’ve received daffodils from the men in my life. My sweet daddy never failed to bring me at least one of these flowers every single year. I believe he gave me one even in the nursing home, as his homegoing was drawing near. I imagine it was picked illegally from manicured flowerbeds, but nonetheless, I cherished it!

I also cherished how my young husband assumed the daffodil ministry when we married, always making a show of his flowery offerings to our boys. He taught them early in life to pick daffodils for me. Some of my fondest mommy memories involve chubby little fistfuls of my yellow flowers, picked with expectant love by sons and grandkids.

But our younger son took daffodil hunting to an entirely different level over his lifetime. It became a quest to find our area’s very first daffodil of the year and pick it just for me. I always tried not to think of the places he trespassed to accomplish his goal, because I loved the look of absolute love on his smiling, dimpled face when he came bearing his gift.

If spring came late in the year, I grew worried that the daffodils would not bloom before my birthday. I also grew worried that one or more of my loving men would forget me, and I wondered how I would handle that disappointment.

But thankfully, they never forgot!

I could write a book about all the different tales they told over the years about their flower findings. Of course, they all tried to outdo each other by bringing their flowers first or telling the tallest tale of their daffodil hunting exploits. The loving competition and the tall tales only served to make our spring-time tradition even more precious. It truly was the moment each year when we celebrated the hopeful end of winter, like a proverbial line in the sand between winter and spring.

My daffodils were more than that, though, much more.

Moms of sons must be pretty tough. We mustn’t be too sentimental or mushy, and we learned early on to abandon the hope of frills and lace. We also learned to cherish the muddier side of motherhood very quickly, including tadpoles, lizards, and mud puddle jumping. We soon realized that the dirtier the adventure, the more fun. So, we simply leaned into it.

To be honest, fishing, hunting, and sports of every kind were also a major part of my life as a mother, along with a house filled with their loud, sweaty friends who counted wrestling as a love language. I still cherish those memories of five or six (or more) boys piled in our den, eating and bragging about who was the better athlete or hunter.

Suffice it to say, flowers were not always a given in those kinds of crowds.

But when spring rolled around, even the toughest of my sons’ friends knew the Lucius daffodil tradition, so they alerted Chris to any emerging clusters of green daffodil stems growing throughout town. And they told their own tall tales about Chris picking flowers.

One of my favorite stories was shared by one of his friend’s mothers after Chris died in 2023. She wrote to tell me about the day that her son and another friend saw Chris pulled over on the side of our busy four-lane state highway when they were in high school.

They thought his old truck was having trouble, so they pulled over a few car lengths ahead of Chris and ran back to check on him. But he assured them he was fine and told his friends he was just stopping to pick me some daffodils up on the highway hillside. They laughed, got back in their truck, shaking their head at a guy who would do something that crazy for his momma.

Of course, those memories made the spring after Chris’ death even more tender. But I received plenty of my favorite flowers from his dad, his brother, and even other people who realized my heart ached to see Chris bring me some daffodils.

Fast-forward to this year, after we moved into our new home out in the country near Chris’s family – a house we literally bought (in part) because of the promise of hills covered with springtime daffodils.

Just as my anticipated flowers began poking their way through the cold February soil, we had a doozy of an ice storm, with temperatures in the low teens for several days.

I knew they were resilient, but I honestly wondered if the storm had killed the daffodils. So, I began praying for them to bloom despite the ice, even though we saw no hints of yellow blossoms.

Much to our surprise, we awoke on Valentine’s Day and looked out the kitchen window to see one brave daffodil holding its head up against the blasting cold winds of February. What a beautiful sight to behold!

As the poet William Wordsworth described in his beloved poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” that tiny yellow flower instantly filled my heart with pleasure and made it want to dance with the daffodils.

My delight continued for several days, as it was the only daffodil on our entire hill and the entire neighborhood. As I pondered in my heart the beauty and strength of that one lone flower, I could not help praising God for sending it to me precisely on Valentine’s Day. What a precious gift of love – a reminder that even in the darkest and coldest times of life, He is always working beneath the surface to bring hope and new life to every situation.

That lone daffodil also reminded me to go ahead and praise God even on those dark, cold days. For as Psalm 126:5 so beautifully promises, “Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy.”

And for this momma named Joy, the reaping came bursting joyfully into my heart, straight from the heart of our loving God, the One who never leaves us or forsakes us – in the form of a beautiful daffodil.

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