Several times my daughter had telephoned to say, "Mother, you must come
see the daffodils before they are over." I wanted to go, but it was a
two-hour drive from Laguna to Lake Arrowhead.
"I will come next Tuesday, " I promised, a little reluctantly, on her third call.
Next
Tuesday dawned cold and rainy. Still, I had promised, and so I drove
there. When I finally walked into Carolyn's house and hugged and greeted
my grandchildren, I said, "Forget the daffodils, Carolyn! The road is
invisible in the clouds and fog, and there is nothing in the world
except you and these children that I want to see bad enough to drive
another inch!"
My daughter smiled calmly and said, "We drive in this all the time, Mother."
"Well, you won't get me back on the road until it clears, and then I'm heading for home!" I assured her.
"I was hoping you'd take me over to the garage to pick up my car."
"How far will we have to drive?"
"Just a few blocks," Carolyn said. "I'll drive. I'm used to this."
After several minutes, I had to ask, "Where are we going? This isn't the way to the garage!"
"We're going to my garage the long way," Carolyn smiled, "by way of the daffodils."
"Carolyn," I said sternly, "please turn around."
"It's all right, Mother, I promise. You will never forgive yourself if you miss this experience."
After
about twenty minutes, we turned onto a small gravel road and I saw a
small church. On the far side of the church, I saw a hand-lettered sign
that said, "Daffodil Garden."
We got out of the car and each took
a child's hand, and I followed Carolyn down the path. Then, we turned a
corner of the path, and I looked up and gasped. Before me lay the most
glorious sight. It looked as though someone had taken a great vat of
gold and poured it down over the mountain peak and slopes. The flowers
were planted in majestic, swirling patterns-great ribbons and swaths of
deep orange, white, lemon yellow, salmon pink, saffron, and butter
yellow. Each different-colored variety was planted as a group so that it
swirled and flowed like its own river with its own unique hue. There
were five acres of flowers.
"But who has done this?" I asked Carolyn.
"It's just one woman," Carolyn answered. "She lives on the property. That's her home."
Carolyn
pointed to a well kept A-frame house that looked small and modest in
the midst of all that glory. We walked up to the house. On the patio, we
saw a poster. "Answers to the Questions I Know You Are Asking" was the
headline.
The first answer was a simple one."50,000 bulbs," it
read. The second answer was, "One at a time, by one woman. Two hands,
two feet, and very little brain." The third answer was, "Began in 1958."
There
it was, The Daffodil Principle. For me, that moment was a life-changing
experience. I thought of this woman whom I had never met, who, more
than forty years before, had begun ~ one bulb at a time ~ to bring her
vision of beauty and joy to an obscure mountain top. Still, just
planting one bulb at a time, year after year, had changed the world.
This unknown woman had forever changed the world in which she lived. She
had created something of ineffable (indescribable) magnificence,
beauty, and inspiration.
The principle her daffodil garden taught
is one of the greatest principles of celebration. That is, learning to
move toward our goals and desires one step at a time ~ often just one
baby-step at a time ~ and learning to love the doing, learning to use
the accumulation of time. When we multiply tiny pieces of time with
small increments of daily effort, we too will find we can accomplish
magnificent things. We can change the world.
"It makes me sad in a
way," I admitted to Carolyn. "What might I have accomplished if I had
thought of a wonderful goal thirty-five or forty years ago and had
worked away at it 'one bulb at a time' through all those years. Just
think what I might have been able to achieve!"
My daughter summed up the message of the day in her usual direct way. "Start tomorrow," she said.
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