Blue Cornflowers

In  with the pumpkins and squash, the green pole beans and sunflowers, my husband Michael planted blue cornflowers. As it turns out, they are together with red poppies, among my most favorite flowers. When I was growing up in Belgium, one of my fondest visual memories is of fields of wheat in the summertime, and seeing the red poppies and blue cornflowers mixed in with the cream colored wheat stalks. The combination of the bright red and strong blue was hypnotic to me. As it turns out, the blue cornflower was John F. Kennedy's favorite flower, and a wreath of corn flowers was part of King Tutankhamen's tomb. It is the flower for young men in love,  and it seems to be a mostly masculine flower, but I happen to be very fond of it. My father's people  were farmers, and on his mother's side they were millers, who immigrated from France. To this day, you can visit the original Dujardin bakery in Amiens. I feel closer to my father's family when I am in our garden, and see the pumpkins and tomatoes grow, and harvest the last of the red currants, and strawberries, and look forward to the blueberries turning ripe. I love being outside, early in the morning, love the wholesomeness, the sounds of the birds, the early morning breeze, the absence of mechanical noises. My heart  goes out to the farmers whose lively hoods are being threatened by the worst drought in the US in 50 years. My mother's family on her father's side were wealthy landowners and goldsmiths, and on her mother's side well educated artists and musicians. I guess my soul embraced both legacies, by being a poet and story teller who loves the country side. Somehow the blend proved disastrous for my parents' marriage, as my mother gave in to narcissistic frivolity and alcoholism, and it proved a real struggle for us four siblings. My two sisters did not survive it, my brother and my relationship did not survive it either, and we have plenty of scars to keep us hesitant from trying to reconnect. Dark blue is a noble color, a color of calm, associated with royalty, dignity. Perhaps that is part of the attraction to me with the blue cornflower, maybe by making it mine, I feel redeemed at least privately from the shame and sorrow of my family's disastrous story. The red poppies I am so fond of bring back memories of the Romani coming through my hometown when I was growing up. They represent the untamed, the wild and free part of my spirit. Perhaps seeing them together as I did in the Flemish wheat fields of my native Belgium was an intuitive way to bolster my heart and memories from the storms that were coming my way.