Wildflowers

 

 
She'd watch him as a child plowing the fields of his family farm imagining someday, he’d ask her to marry him. He barley noticed the younger girl, it was her older sister he had eyes for. She remembered times he’d come to the door calling on her with a bunch of wildflowers he picked on his way over. Her sister would smile, and they’d sit on the front porch swing sipping lemonade trying to find conversation that didn’t really ever come along.  A few months later her sister ran off with a farm hand who promised her the moon and we never saw her again. Momma said she wished the young man down the road had been the one but, sometimes life just wasn’t fair.

She grew up to be a beautiful young lady who still hid and watched the boy down the road as he plowed the fields, dreaming he’d bring her wildflowers someday. But like momma said, sometimes life just isn’t fair. On her sixteenth birthday they had a picnic and momma invited the family down the road. She wondered if he would come but why she wondered would he care about her birthday he didn’t even know she existed. She was putting bowls of fruit on the picnic table when they arrived.  Greetings were exchanged and her legs got week as he held out a bouquet of wildflowers. Happy Birthday he said smiling the most beautiful smile shed ever seen.

They got to know each other that day and the day after that. He was her first kiss, and she knew in her heart she’d found true love. The next few months were magical. Long walks across the vast fields and picnics under an ancient oak. It was on one such day he professed his love for her and two became as one. Two months later he was called to serve his country which he proudly did until he didn’t. She watched one hot summer day as the dust from a car made its way to the farm down the road and her heart sunk as she saw the U. S. Army painted on the doors.

He died a hero sacrificing his own life to save others and nobody expected anything less from him. One month later she gave birth to a beautiful baby girl. She had her daddy’s eyes and hopefully his gentle heart. Momma thought she was crazy naming the child Wildflower, but she didn’t care. Besides the child, wildflowers were his way of telling her he loved her and now every time she called her name, his memory would fill her heart with joy .Life just isn’t fair all right but other times its as true as a babies cry and a hand picked bouquet of wildflowers.