Beauty Is As Beauty Does

Dahlias will always be some of my favorite flowers.

Some of my earliest and most precious memories consist of my grandfather's beautiful backyard.  My mother's father, widowed for more than a decade when I can first remember becoming aware of the magnificence of his backyard, grew thousands of dahlias to occupy his time.  I can recall flowers as small as a three-year-old's fist and as large as dinner plates, and with colors ranging from the purest white to a purple so dark it looked ebony in the sunshine.  I came across this photo this morning, looking for examples of beauty as I had been thinking of the quote, "Beauty is as beauty does."  It reminded me so much of my grandpa whom my sister and I always called "Daddy Jack" that I decided to write about him instead. He was an amazing man in many ways and accomplished great things in his lifetime, his dahlias being one of them.

My grandpa entered the world on March 23, 1912.  As the oldest of eight brothers and sisters,  he developed a deep sense of caring and responsibility for others during his childhood and young adulthood.  He protected his mother from his abusive, alcoholic father and helped support the younger siblings during the Great Depression.  He learned resiliency, stoicism, and compassion during those years and truly understood the concept of self-sacrifice from a young age.  After hearing some of the stories from his youth, I am amazed that he grew into such a loving, generous, and well-adjusted man.  He persevered against situations that might have broken a weaker man and made a wonderful life for himself and his small family consisting of my grandmother and my mother. Although he had seen the darker side of the world from up close, he never lost his ability to see the beauty the world contained.  He celebrated that beauty through his flowers.

The dahlias took center stage throughout the year, not just during the late summer and early fall when they bloomed in a riot of color.  My grandfather spent countless hours digging the earth, safely storing the bulbs during the winter, carefully planning the planting so the colors and shapes would play beautifully with one another in the closely packed flowerbeds. All his hard work and dedication paid off when in July and August his backyard would explode with the most gorgeous flowers imaginable.  Another wonderful by-product of his garden, the countless hummingbirds that would feed in the early morning and early evenings, amazed me as a young girl.  So many would congregate you could hear this delicious buzzing and humming for a solid hour.  Sitting still on the work table on his back porch, my grandpa and I would watch the birds with quiet fascination.  Merely thinking of those golden moments brings a smile to my face every time.

The first year Daddy Jack became too weak to properly care for his flowers, my father who loved him as both a father and a friend, tried his hardest to make the dahlias bloom as my grandfather had.  Even though he put in every effort, the flowers did not respond to my father as they did to my grandpa.  They looked weak and anemic, almost as if they felt the declining health of Daddy Jack and responded in kind as a form of sympathy. I could feel the change coming that year, and shied away from the inevitability of his death.  Even as I continued to spend my evenings on the back porch with my grandfather, watching the hummingbirds, enticing him to eat milkshakes I would bring home from work, scratching his back and making the time as normal as possible, I could feel it coming and a deep sadness lay just underneath my surface almost all the time.

My grandpa, however, never gave into the sadness. I don't even know if he ever felt it.  He enjoyed every minute of those evenings. He always marveled at how beautiful the world could be, how wonderfully people could shape something plain and uninspiring into something profoundly magnificent and this true appreciation of life made his life meaningful and deep until the very end.  It also comprised one of the best and longest-lasting lessons I have ever had the good fortune to be taught.  Daddy Jack taught me to appreciate that the world contained infinite beauty and wonder and that people could and should create beautiful things not only for personal enjoyment but to make the world a better place as well.  As long as a person could go through life with gratitude, appreciation, and a willingness to work, life would be good and enjoyable until the last minute. Thank you, Jack L. Mayfield for giving me this gift of gratitude, developing my eyes to see all things beautiful, and sowing the seeds of true appreciation for all that life has to offer.  I miss you every single day.

 Earliest Eyes

From my earliest eyes, I remember flowers.

Plots, rows, and beds

of color dripping upon color

as if a rainbow had melted

in your back yard.

Hummingbirds in the late afternoon sun

danced on the air so joyful 

in the summer sanctuary you created.

Buzzing and gliding,

landing on dinner-plate dahlias,

they reveled in their feast.

Holding my tiny hand 

in your work-roughened fingers,

you spoke to me about the importance

of believing in beauty

without ever saying a word.

Always the gardener,

you sowed the seeds early 

and with grandfatherly patience

waited for them to bloom.

I wish you could see me now.

In the summer of my life.

I've taken all your lessons and put them to use,

blossoming .

I live in a world 

with color dripping upon color

as if a rainbow

had melted upon

me.