Rachel Jackson – Sunflowers in Vase, Jane Manco

Inspired by Sunflowers in Vase by Jane Manco

Rachel Jackson

After the last snowflake melts, after the first raindrops fall from the awakening skies, after the thawing soil is tilled for planting, when the vernal sun breaks over the eastern horizon, a certain field of sunflowers begins its annual bloom, and Dolores begins watching from the farmhouse next door to see which sunflower will reach maturity first each year – it is that flower upon whose stem she will tie her daughter’s white hair ribbon, the one she wore on her quinceañera.

It is no longer Dolores’s family’s field of sunflowers – she sold the land years ago, after the accident – but the owners permit her to walk through the field as she pleases, as she must. It is her ritual. When from her east-facing window she sees the first glint of yellow emerging shyly from behind its leaves to greet and follow the shining sun, she walks purposefully, reverently, toward it, her annual journey underway.

Weaving through rows of green leaves, she nears it, a folded little thing with hesitant petals bent inward on themselves, not yet a mature, dignified sunflower but painted enough with a tinge of vibrant yellow to cause a sting of tears to form at the back of Dolores’s eyes. Yellow was Mariposa’s favorite color. The blooming of the sunflower field every summer was a homecoming for her, enraptured as she was by the feeling of warm sunshine on her face, cool dirt between her toes, and the subtle earthy scent of growth all around her – every year in the field she grew stronger, ran faster, reached higher. She was drawn to the field as butterflies are to nectar.

Her first steps as a baby were taken near the field, her mother told her often, painting a vivid verbal picture of little Mariposa in bare feet wobbling unsteadily at first, holding onto her mother’s pinky finger until Dolores slowly pulled her hand away and Mariposa tottered joyfully along on her own.

Her last steps, fourteen years later, were taken at the edge of the field too, disregarded and disavowed by a careless driver who was less desirous of the presence of sunflowers as he was of chasing a different intoxicating high.

Sunflowers were the bookends of her life. The first sunflower of the season is always for her.

A month after the flower appears, Dolores carries shears into the field, walking this time into a

sea of full-grown yellow blooms. In the bright summer sun the flowers are all nearly identical in their stunning upturned faces. But Dolores has eyes only for the one she tied the ribbon on weeks ago, which she cuts at its base and carries back with her into the kitchen.

She will venture into the field again tomorrow to gather more flowers – five more, one for every year since the accident – but today one is enough.

Placing the sunflower in a clear glass vase, Dolores steps back and looks outside, running the white ribbon absentmindedly between her fingers. She watches for this moment every year: when all the sunflowers have bloomed to maturity and stop the process of heliotropism, the natural circadian cycle of a sunflower’s life when it follows the sun as it matures, and finally stands on its own, forever facing east.

Dolores’s kitchen window faces east too, and in late summer, after the sunflowers blossom, all she can see of them is their green crowns supporting their yellow-tipped backs. The gradual end of the flowers’ heliocentric ritual is a time of bittersweetness, as she knows they will no longer turn from the east to face her; the sunflowers will no longer greet her with their bright, eager faces. She accepts the passing of the season, reluctant though she is to say goodbye.

Inside the house, the solitary sunflower stands now on a table near the window, on which Dolores solemnly places the white hair ribbon. The sun setting through the window next to her has painted the flowers outside a warm pink. Dolores walks across to the hallway facing her bedroom and turns off the lights, leaving only the ambient pink glow reaching into the shadows of the dark kitchen.

She turns around one last time before crossing the threshold. “Goodnight, my girl,” she whispers to the sunflower. That night Dolores dreams of her childhood dog happily chasing its tail, while beyond her doorframe the sunflower stands tall and proud, its outstretched petals facing west, toward the sunset of its life. u