Wendi {at random}

Mom has a memory of Daddy puttering in the back yard. He was planting tulip bulbs in the small stretch of space between the old railroad cross-ties that served as a retaining wall for as long as I can remember. She remembers him pushing them into the soft dirt, making over them like they were his babies. Skinny, blue jeaned Daddy, leaning over the earth, planting a promise.

And then he got sick again. The doctors sliced into his throat and stole his cancer infected larynx, leaving him mute with helplessness. Then they fired doses of radiation into his neck and injected poison into his veins to kill the cancer cells swimming free. They tried. They tried so hard to save him. But a year without Michelle and a voice that wouldn't be heard left him with little left to live for. He slipped away, even as we prayed for him to stay.

Daddy found his voice again in the fall. He found his voice, blood fresh with life, and healthy cells moving to the drumbeat of God. He found himself in heaven, and we found ourselves crying on earth, longing to hear his country words of reason and a pathetic joke or two. The winter was long. It was cold. It was snowy and without a light we'd come to depend on. After a winter of dusk, spring crawled in.

The earth tilted more pleasing to the sun. Grass greened. The Bradford pear and dogwood blossomed fresh and white. Something green and new uncurled between the cross-ties. Without warning, pink tulips spoke. Look at me. Look at us.

Mom glanced out the window. She heard the sound. The voices of tulips whispering in the wind. Look at us. We were planted by the loving hand of a man in love with God. We were born of the earth, nurtured beneath the frozen white. We were breathed on by the hope of tomorrow and the promise of today. We are a gift from the man with the weary hands. His voice, fragrance pink and beauty full, wants you to know. He loves you. He loves you. He loves you.