by Bryan Cooper
My Grandmother pulled me outside to her flower beds with spades, a pot, and gloves in the sharp Spring sunlight of the western plains. “Dig those up,” she said pointing at a clump of bright yellow daffodils. I dropped down and started pulling up bulbs in clods.
As I handed her the handful of Oklahoma dirt wrapped around the flowers, I asked, “What are we doing with them?” She was already plumbing them into a pot and arranging the bells of the flowers to broadcast their sunny disposition in all directions.
“I owe Miss Denton an apology so we are taking these over.”
I squinted across the street to Miss Denton’s yard. “She already has a lot of daffodils — maybe we should give her some other flower.”
“Nope — these are good.” She stood up with the freshly shaped pot dusting off her knees. “It’s not the flower I’m giving her — it’s the apology.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know. I just want when I tell her I’m sorry for losing my temper, I want it to have the right… coloring I guess.”
I looked at Miss Denton’s large plot of daffodils spreading all around her porch, and then at my Grandmother’s garden with yards of the same yellow flowers. I wondered how many times those bulbs had gone back and forth across the street over the decades.