Roman mythology states that daisies came to be when Belides, an innocent wood nymph, turned herself into a daisy to avoid the unwanted attraction that Vertumnus had for her. I guess my attraction to daisies began with unrequited love as well.
A few years ago, I was dating a boy named Taylor. He had told me he loved me, but even a month after he had, I couldn’t say it back. I did really care for him a lot, but certain things made me believe that I shouldn’t continue on in the relationship. We were both going to college in Utah and we were going to have a two week break between semesters-- Taylor was going to spend it at his parent’s place in California. As I helped him pack up his things, I told him that I thought his trip was a good chance for us to take a break. He took it with dignity-- but he cried. I felt awful. I knew what this was doing to him, and I wanted so badly for it to not hurt him. And on that note, we parted.
Daisies are the flower of innocence-- that feeling was furthest from my mind.
After he left, I was surprised to find how quickly I missed him-- pleasantly surprised. We’d had so much turbulence of late that I didn’t expect I’d get back with him, but I was finding myself happy to think that my mind might change. Then, one day I was alone in my apartment when I heard a knock at the door. I opened the door and heard words that I thought only happened in movies, “Flowers for Hannah.” The man handed me a beautifully simple bouquet of white daisies in a sunshine yellow vase. I’d never felt so special before. I opened the note that was attached, it read, “Regardless of what ends up happening between us, you deserve these. -Your boy”
He still cared about me. He was fighting to keep us together. He was humble about it. He was respectful of my feelings. He was still in pain. I missed him. I knew I wanted it to work with him. I felt awful for hurting him. All these thoughts and more culminated into a feeling that I still don’t have a word for. I just sat on my couch and absorbed it all-- looking at my daisies. I decided then, that I was going to fight for this relationship, too.
June 25 2011, the day of our wedding reception, there were daisies everywhere.
So daisies may have all kinds of origins, meanings, or connotations-- but when my husband and I give each other daisies, it tells us a unique story about a friendship and love that withstands adversity, and reminds us how grateful we are to be together.
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At first this was a very difficult assignment for me. I couldn’t think of any object I had that carried sentimental value, because I loose things way too often or they break and-- well I don’t own anything that I still had five years ago. So nothing had a childhood memory attached. Also, other things in my life have made me separate my life into phases and once I moved on from one phase I didn’t look back much. However, I’ve realized that those phases of my life are still very significant to me-- knowing that I will move on in life and move away and likely not keep in touch with many people doesn’t make me value my friendship and experiences with those people any less. I found that the same is true with some objects, like the daisies. By nature, a daisy will die a week or two after you get it. But each daisy still brings meaning and it strengthens our relationship.
In a poem called The Daisy-- On Finding One in Bloom on Christmas Day, James Montgomery states, “...The Rose has but a summer reign; The Daisy never dies.” In this poem, Montgomery uses daisies as a metaphor for more withstanding relationships. It is interesting that without knowing that, my own daisy story paralleled this same idea. I appreciated that the daisy has a running theme of these good connotations, because this story kind of solidifies it as a symbol of my relationship. I find that hard to accept because life and relationships have so many layers that boiling them down to a handful of objects means that some things have to be left out. So what objects will survive to represent something so big? I had those same questions as I read the section of the reading about the musician. The objects and their short stories gave me a lot of insight to her character, but they all focused on her as the musician. I expect there is a lot more to her life than that, another collage could be made with only one or two objects that relate to music. But that would be too much to try to represent. So just like anytime we tell a story, we have to pick an angle to focus on and sadly leave out much of the rest.
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