Flower Lady

Sometimes little gestures in life can come back to us many times over.  That obnoxious neighbor that never smiles could perhaps use a little wave or maybe a friendly hello. My neighbor from years back use to be in her yard working with her flowers all the time.  She would spend hours just raking, pulling weeds and keeping the flowers thriving with all the attention.

Because of her coldness, the neighborhood children would sometimes taunt her.  When I would see that happpening, I would rush to the fence separating our property and scold them firmly.  She would just bow her head and continue to stroke the dirt around her flowers.

One day after many years of watching her little body bend more with age and noticing that she wasn't as zealous in her gardening as she had been, I threw up my hand and waved.  Lo and behold, she walked to the fence and her face actually smiled at me.  Flustered, I apologized for the way the children and some of the neighbors had treated her and she shushed me by telling her story.

Many, many years earlier, she had escaped from a hard life in a war torn country and made her way to America. She had worked so hard to be able to have a little yard in which to grow flowers.  She said the children taunting her by calling her " Flower Lady" never bothered her because they were children and knew no better. She was content with her life and wasn't lonely because her flowers were friends of hers.

As she walked away, it looked like the flowers had bowed their head to say goodbye to the little lady that had so tenderly cared for them.