I always thought tulips were pretty flowers, but they were never my favorites. I preferred roses, lilies, carnations...even marigolds and pansies. Tulips, while beautiful, never even made my short list of flowers I absolutely adored. But one day that changed, all thanks to my then four-year-old son.
My son first spotted tulips about a year ago at the grocery store, and he begged to "buy" me some. I didn't need them or particularly want them, but there was something about the look on his face that just melted my heart, so I gave in to his request. He jumped up and down with his excitement, and I watched as he examined all the bunches carefully, trying to decide which one was his favorite. Finally he handed me a bunch of orange tulips, a big grin spread across his tiny face. "These are for you, Mommy." My heart melted again.
Since that moment, tulips have moved up high on the list of my favorite flowers. It's not so much the tulip itself that I love but the way my son reacts when he sees them and how proud he is to share them with me. When I look at them now, I see my son and his big heart and handsome, smiling face. I never want to forget these moments.
My son continues to choose tulips for me each spring when they're available in our local grocery store. Right now I have a vase full of yellow ones on the kitchen table, and I believe he said that the next ones are going to be the pink ones he saw last Friday night.
I can't wait!
Before I end this post, I wanted to share this short piece I wrote one day after coming home from a shopping trip with my son:
He points out the tulips whenever we pass them, shakes my arm and urges me to look at the colors--the reds and pinks and oranges, the greens and blues and mahoganies, the deep purples and their more subtle and muted lavender sisters--and he presses me forward until we stand at the front of the display, he, clasping his hands and staring with wide, child eyes and I, watching him, the flush in his cheeks and the way he bounces on his feet, the light inside him breaking through to shine upon those flowers and us all.
Do you have a favorite flower? Is there a story behind your love for it?
