Seven Daffodils

Today I left my handbag in a grocery cart at the market.  I remember pushing the cart into a train of other carts and then driving home.  I didn’t notice for several hours that my purse was gone until I went searching for my cell phone which is always waiting in my bag.  I remained very calm.  I drove back to the store and asked the manager at the courtesy desk if anyone had turned in a purse.  After several long minutes, it was handed back to me.  The manager told me that a woman had found it in the cart and said she almost took it home because it was so pretty.

It is a pretty little bag and I just bought it.  It’s coral with a nice outside envelope for my phone.  Everything was intact and I’m glad the woman who found it, didn’t take it home after all.  Things could have been very complicated had it been stolen.  The strange calmness I felt earlier was replaced with overwhelming gratitude and my mind wandered on the way home as to what I would have done had it turned out differently.  Where would I start?  With the cell phone or credit cards?  What about the check I had tucked away in my wallet?  How many zeroes could be written on that check?  Enough to wipe me out?  I shuddered.

A few weeks ago I went to a Jonathan Edwards concert.  It was a beautiful spring evening and the small theater, an old brick courthouse, was filled with a nice group of fans.  A warm scented breeze drifted through the transoms on top of the old windows which were propped open with short sticks of wood.  Edwards was barefoot and convivial.  He sang a few favorites and then a song I never heard before.  I’m not sure how I missed Seven Daffodils during my folksong-loving days but I was captivated with the poignant melody and the lyrics. 

It’s a quietly pleasing piece about a lover without a fortune of his own who cannot give his beloved pretty things.  He tells her that what he can provide are moonbeam necklaces and rings, crusts of bread, and seven golden daffodils. 

Now I’ve heard that love won’t pay the rent and the rumor is that marrying for it the second time around is pure folly.  But I know from personal experience that money can’t hold your hand as you await CT results in the ER at midnight.  And I never turn down bread, with or without slabs of butter and really  – doesn’t moonbeam jewelry sound positively enchanting?  As for daffodils, they make me feel as grateful as I felt tonight when my lost handbag was at last dropped into my waiting hands.