A Little Yellow Flower

A most wondrous and wonderful day. Early in the morning, a colleague came into my classroom. He was wearing a lovely little daffodil pinned to his sweater. Now he is a large man, a renowned soccer player and athlete, hale and hearty from the mystical country of Wales. I remarked on his flower and he told me he was celebrating St. David's Day, something they do in Wales on March 1st, and sometimes even beyond. This tiny burst of brilliant yellow brought a brightness to the morning and made me smile. "I also need a yellow flower!" I said, and intended to find one to celebrate the day. It was, after all, the first warm day in months, and a feeling of the long winter thawing and the arrival of Spring so brightly in the air.

A few minutes later, I ran into my colleague's son, an old student who was at school as a substitute teacher. "Where is your yellow flower?" I asked. "Isn't it St David's Day?" We laughed and agreed we both needed to find a yellow flower.

Then I completely forgot about the whole thing as the rushing events of the day came towards me in an inevitable tide.

At lunch time, all the students went outside to sit in the sunshine to eat and romp around, delighting in the green happiness of the day. At the end of the period, two younger students approached me shyly. They were each wearing a yellow flower in their hair. Timidly, they handed me a modest little yellow flower. "We picked these and decided to give the last one to the first person we saw, and that was you!" There was no way in which they knew anything at all about wish for a yellow flower.

And so there it was: my very own yellow flower. A gift from the universe, from my dear students, and from the magical fairies of Wales.