ON MY MIND
A daffodil by any other name By Paul Kandarian
O
n Easter morning this year, I walked outside and saw spring’s first daffodils in bloom. I smiled, and shed a few tears. Happens every year. Always. Every spring for most of my mother’s life, I would bring her the first daffodils I’d find, usually from the sun-drenched side of my grandparents’ house that was adjacent to ours. It always brought a smile and a tear to her face as well, a tradition of mother and son I sorely miss. This maternal-floral connection has a bit of genetic history, I guess; my father, who grew up in that house next to us, would bring his mother the first lilacs of spring from a beautiful grove my grandfather had planted just for her. My Grandpa loved my Nana with all his heart and having flowers planted to make her happy was just something he did because of it. How unconditional was that love? He was a full-blooded Armenian, first generation American, my Nana 100 percent Italian, herself first generation. Grandpa was calm. Nana was an Italian firebrand. When Grandpa, a shortish, very rotund, clumsy sort, would bumble around a shop my Nana insisted on going
22
to, he would back into things, fedora in hands before him, apologizing profusely to the shopkeeper. Nana would growl at him to be careful, poking fun in Italian at his “big belly,” to which Grandpa would sigh and smile and say, “I love you too, Rosie.” And then stumble into something else and apologize. My youthful exposure to flowers was minimal and now, like many men, I am decidedly not a flower guy. You could
May 2021 | The South Coast Insider
threaten me with death as you ask me to name a certain flower and unless they were daffodils or lilacs, well, just pull the trigger, I got nothing. I write a lot about my Dad; of all the people who’ve made an impact on who I’ve become, notably an actor and writer, his was pretty powerful. Those were two things he always wanted to be and had the raw talent to do so. He just never followed through, instead
becoming, as was the norm then, a provider. In many ways, my mom’s impact was as much if not more noticeable, and not just because she’s the one who gave me literal life inside her body, sustaining me and then birthing me into the world. A mother is often the first touch, the first kiss, the first hug, the first pure infusion of unconditional love a child will have. The impacts my Mom
