I walked out my front door today and saw purple flowers with a flame of yellow. “That’s why they didn’t bloom in April,” I said. “They’re not daffodils, they’re irises.” I had given up hope with these bulbs. The stalks had shot up in the early spring, but when no flower came at the end of daffodil season, I thought they were duds. Not enough sun. I  planted them upside-down. Maybe I left them out in the sun too long before planting. The squirrels must have nibbled them.

“It’s a parable,” my husband said. “Like the ugly duckling.” So many parenting lessons in gardening, aren’t there? Your two year old will not always be a bossy pants. Really, your teenager will outgrow all those hormones. And here’s another: Wait to judge your mother’s parenting until you’ve tried it yourself.

Happy Mother’s Day, Mom. It’s only now, as a mother myself, that I can appreciate all you’ve done.

Eight years ago today, sharp pains woke me in my hospital bed at 3 AM. The doctor said, “Call your husband and tell him the baby will be born in 30 minutes.” James arrived in 25, just as Ella’s head was starting to poke out.

Ella is now older than I was when my father died, so if I die she will remember me better than I remember him. It’s a morbid thought to have on a day of birth. I wonder if other people who’ve experienced death at such a young age think this way, too.

As a child, I kept expecting more people to die. This is what grown-ups did, right? I wondered—with a regularity that now seems neurotic—who would take care of my brother, sister, and me once my mother was gone.

Ella will never meet my father, who shared my red hair, liberal leanings, and rebel spirit. He will never take her hunting in the woods of Northern Michigan, never teach her how to weld or navigate by the stars. He never did these things for me, either, but I like to imagine he would have. I can imagine whatever I want.

My father favored tomboys, and Ella is a girly-girl, but he would have loved her, anyway. He would have taught her to make white bean soup and grilled cheese sandwiches, the way he taught me. He would have taken her into the forest, expecting her to keep up with his pace, four steps for every one of his. It makes me tired just remembering.

He would have inspected her room for cleanliness, with a military exactness. He would have made her eat everything on her plate. He would have tolerated no crying, ever (“You want me to give you something to cry about?”), but especially not on a joyous occasion like Ella’s eighth birthday.