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Today, I learned the name of those flower shrubs that grew near my house. They were behind the playground in the cul-de-sac. Potentilla. I never knew what they were called. To me, they were just those flowers.
The white ones looked like daisies. Because they were white and had yellow
centers. The yellow ones were the same,
but they were yellow.
There were lots of them in the summertime. They grew on bushes. The bushes looked the same for both the
yellow and the white flowers. (in later
years I would discover that there could be pink ones, but back then, there was
only white and yellow) To this day, I
still like the white and yellow ones. They always seem to have more flowers
than the pink ones.
I used to pick those little flowers off the bush. Sometimes I would put them in my hair, but
they were so small they fell out. Mostly
I played the game that the girls played with daisies in the story books or
cartoons. Each little flower had five
round petals. They were perfect for that
daisy game, since I thought the white ones were daisies anyway. I remember preferring the white ones.
He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me, he loves me not.
I had no idea who “he” was.
I still don’t. It didn’t
matter. He loves me, he loves me not, he
loves me!
The last petal was always the same, whoever he was, he loved
me alright. I kept playing the game to
make sure.
One day, I tried starting with “He loves me not” instead of
“he loves me”. The flower ended with He loves me not! I counted the petals, there were five. I didn’t know what odd and even numbers were
back then, but that day I learned that when a flower has five petals, whatever
you start with will be what you end with.
No more surprises. I
knew, from that day one, “he” would always, always love me.
Years later, in our new house: Mom put some shrubs with the
same yellow flowers in front of our house.
I decided that someday, I will remember the white ones too. They look more like daisies.
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