Violets.
Yes, one has their splashy magnolia, forsythia, dogwood, cherry blossoms, tulips, daffodils - the whole springtime parade of lavish color - and they are glorious! But what can top the beauty of the lowly violet clambering through the woodland paths, backing up against stone wall, nestling at the foot of trees?
These demure offerings that hold dark depths of blue-purple-lavender in four small petals elicit my fondest memories
Every Spring, as children, we picked a small bouquet of them, placed them in a cracked but lovely old cream pitcher and took them to an elderly friend who lived in - what is now a socially incorrect term - old people's home.(But really they were old and it was a home, so?)
Ellie, our ancient friend, was small and bent, walked down the steps backward so as not to be frightened by the descent, and lived for years in the tiniest of rooms that belched heat from the steaming radiators, causing my perpetually hot-flashed mother to fan and fan with whatever magazine or paper was at hand. We children sat on her bed, feet dangling quietly, and waited for the time we would be release and could rove about the shining waxed halls observing discreetly residential life.
The violets shone on her dresser.
We who embraced springtime. romping through the greening fields, hedgerows and meadows, gulping it down with abandon after the long winter, brought a token of rebirth to this place of diminishing light.
I never see a violet all these years later without thinking of Ellie, of youth and age, of the magic elixir of childhood, of majesty in miniature.
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