The crocuses are poking their heads up smiling at the sun.
The daffodils are on cue. The spring ritual of renewal begins and life goes on.
I once read an article that likened people to flowers in that some are early producers while others are asters or chrysanthemums that wait until almost the end of the season for their showy blooms.
Some of us begin producing right away and bloom until we wear ourselves out. Others are like dandelions that keep popping up everywhere, especially in places that aren't wanted.
When I think about what kind of a flower I'd be, I would guess a daisy.
It's a fairly acceptable flower but nothing too exotic. Daisies are hardy, and if watered and fed, they bloom a lot and enjoy the sun.
But unlike flowers whose outcome is fairly predictable, people can change and evolve as the events of our lives shape us.
As we begin to find out what our talents are and make choices, the world can be open for us.
Look at Mother Teresa, who was born to Albanian parents in southern Yugoslavia. She later went to India, and because of her work with the poor won the Nobel Prize.
Luck and timing, of course, play a part.
A lifelong friend of ours, Robert Oaks, served in Vietnam as a jet-fighter pilot.
His plane was shot down, but his helicopter buddies reached him before the Viet Cong did, or he would have become a prisoner of war.
Who would have thought that after serving in the Air Force he would spend many years on peacetime missions as a general authority for the LDS Church?
I'd guess if he were a flower he'd be a four-leaf clover or a hardy perennial.
What seeds in Johannes Vermeer's life germinated for him to see the world as he did and figure out how to put it down on a canvas?
Thomas Edison had only three months of formal education. His teacher pronounced him "a dreamy and addled boy who would never amount to anything."
What inner source drove him to patent more than 1,000 inventions and become "the genius of his age?"
On the other hand, when someone called Edison a genius he wisely replied, "Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
Inspiration or hard work?
Probably both.
When we were living in Salt Lake City, before spending 35 years in Connecticut (who knew?), I clearly remember the day of the first moon landing and the thrill of Neil Armstrong's words, "Tranquility Base here."
"The Eagle has landed."
As a stay-at-home mother of three and expecting my fourth child, I was pondering the wonder of it, and feeling like a very low contributor to society — washer of diapers and sweeper of cookie crumbs.
(At that time I'd probably say I was Bermuda grass.)
I voiced my feelings to my older, wiser neighbor, Pauline Hawker, who happened by.
She listened carefully and then said, "Well, what you must remember is that each one of those men had a mother who gave them birth or they wouldn't have been able to be here and do what they did."
She helped me put life in perspective.
Maybe we are more like flowers than we think.
We each have a purpose to fulfill and a life to go forth in.
Like hibernating flowers, we all welcome the spring sunshine and are storing up energy to get on with life — whatever that life may be.
E-mail: sasyoung2@aol.com