Two Girls, Tulips and Rainbows

Today’s Flyover People column as seen in The Emporia Gazette:

TWO GIRLS, TULIPS AND RAINBOWS

Sitting in the March sun feels pretty much like falling in love. The chill of winter is gone and that sweet warm sun makes my skin smile.

Birds, unseen, chirp in the trees around me. Cars drive past, a lone bicyclist coasts by.

It feels so good to sit on the porch again. When the temperature hits 70 degrees, I move outdoors for some writing and reading time.

Daffodils are spent, but grape hyacinths and the forsythia are in bloom. In front of the porch is a small circle of tulips, their blossoms lipstick red.

Taryn, a neighbor girl who has since moved away, sold us the tulip bulbs years ago during a school fundraiser.

So I think of Taryn each spring as tulip foliage pushes itself out of the brown earth. It grows fast, surely an inch a day. Then, stems with buds appear and the flowers open with the first red splash of the season.

For the past 15 years, as the seasons have changed, as the earth has orbited the sun again and again and again, I’ve spent time on this front porch. From here I’ve watched neighbors move in, neighbors move out.

During the same month that Dave and I purchased our home, the McCoys moved in next door and they promptly celebrated Taryn’s first birthday. Two years after that, Morgan was born. They were great neighbors, the kind of folks from whom you could borrow a piece of aluminum foil when baking, or a lawn edger when your grass crept over the sidewalk. John and Brenda watched our cats while we were on vacation, and we’d take care of their pets when they left town.

Because our driveways were adjacent, we had countless conversations. Many evenings we’d stand in the yard, catching up on family stories or hearing about the girls’ softball games.

On Taryn’s first day of kindergarten, she and Brenda stopped as they walked home from school, and I asked Taryn, “What did you learn today?” She said, “I learned to keep my hands to myself.”

Several years ago, Dave gave me a lighted hula hoop for my birthday. One night after dark, 9 year-old Morgan and I took turns with that hula hoop in our front yard. Dave’s photos captured flashes of blue, yellow, red and green swirling around us like lightning bugs in the night.

Morgan and the hula hoop.

One morning in 2005, Brenda rang the doorbell, and with a bit of panic in her voice said, “Please tell me that both of your cats are indoors.” They weren’t, and yes, that was our Bear lying in the street. I placed him in a cardboard box and carried him to the porch. Brenda and I sat on the steps, her arm around me, tears falling on Bear’s soft gray fur.

One spring evening after a thunderstorm, Morgan came to the door with her usual bright-eyed smile and said, “There’s a rainbow. I thought you’d like to see it.” Well, of course we did.

And that became a tradition after storms: a knock on the door followed by a neighborhood viewing of the rainbow.

In 2008, when Tyson eliminated their slaughter operations and dramatically cut their workforce, Dave and I became worried; both John and Brenda worked at Tyson. Brenda still had her job in the office, but John’s position was cut. After several anxious months, John found employment in Kansas City. We didn’t want them to move and they didn’t want to either.

“All of my life I’ve wanted to leave this town,” John said. “And now that I have to, I don’t want to go.”

The moving van came and went. Brenda and I correspond occasionally online. They are settled in the city and are happy there. But we miss them. We miss John and Brenda, and we miss those two girls with wavy brown hair who rode their bikes up and down the sidewalk, the girls who loved to laugh and tell stories, the girls who were never without a question.

The tulips are blooming now, and in the rainy days ahead, the sun will surely project a rainbow or two onto the sky. Dave and I have to discover rainbows on our own these days, but for a few shining moments, there was a sweet young girl who led us to them.

Copyright 2012 ~ Cheryl Unruh

Taryn connects.

One last photo before they left in 2008, Taryn, Morgan and Madison, the dog.

Morgan back for a visit in 2011.