Sunflower − March, 1997

When I was nine years old, completely by accident, I grew a sunflower.

My mother, for whatever reason, kept a very large, very immovable, pot of dirt sitting out on our balcony. It served no purpose outside of soaking up rainwater and growing nothing. Above this pot of dirt, one day I hung a bird feeder that I had made from an empty juice carton. I stood on a chair and tried to fill the feeder with the various types of bird food I'd pilfered from the house. A gust of wind caught me, or perhaps my clumsiness did, and I lost my balance, throwing seeds and nuts everywhere. Looking back, I realize that I could have easily toppled over the rail and fallen the three stories to my death, but at the moment I was more concerned with the mess I'd made.

Swearing, I swept the bird food off of the balcony with my hands. I then went back inside and forgot about the bird feeder altogether.

A few days later, renewing my interest in the feeder and wondering if it needed to be refilled, I went outside to check on it. What I noticed instead was the tiny plant that had made its home in the useless pot of dirt. I was fascinated. I told my mother about it and she said that it was probably a sunflower, being that the sunflower seeds were the only things in the mix I had spilled that could actually grow into something. I, being the nine-year-old smart ass that I was, replied matter-of-factly that I could grow a bird had I so wanted.

Time eventually told me the same thing that my mother had, and to my utter delight my sunflower grew in with two heads. This was easily the coolest thing to happen since cool itself, and every day I would check on the sunflower, watering it when I thought it needed it and generally noting just how inherently bad ass it was.

One day, after a fairly decent day of doing absolutely nothing and being terribly great at it, I noticed something on the ground, just before I opened the door to my apartment. It was my sunflower. It looked as if someone had sawed it off just below its two heads. I grabbed it and flew up the stairs.

I burst into the apartment, and immediately began berating my younger brother, who was about five at the time. Clueless, but with much fervor, he berated me right back, loudly, and this caused my mother to come into the room. I told her what he had done, thrusting the defeated sunflower in her direction. But she shook her head.

My dad had done it, she'd said, while he was moving the pot of dirt. It had been rubbing against the pot's rough edges for days, so she supposed when he moved it it had finally cut the thing off.

My father apologized, and I could tell that he was upset about it, but my temper was not to be abated so easily. I threw myself into my room with my decapitated sunflower and fumed until I was too tired to fume anymore. I can still remember the expression on my dad's face when he told me he'd killed my sunflower, and I never stopped feeling bad about blowing up at him because of it. It's weird, this persistence guilt tends to have.

It was a pretty bad ass sunflower, though.

Tags: badassness, sunflowers, Green Valley

Posted on March 2, 2007. and has been viewed 765 times.

Comments:

pepero (March 3, 2007. 02:42am)

when i was a little kid i was terrified by sunflowers because they were so gigantic, towering over me and making me feel lilliputian. now that i'm older i love sunflowers. did you ever try to re-plant more seeds?