Carlotta and the Daffodils

In New York, on almost every corner there is a bodega. In the Korean ones especially, you’d find flowers lined outside on the sidewalk under the awning. For a few weeks each Spring, they would sell daffodils, and there would be great bunches of them stuffed into those big white plastic buckets. Five gallon paint buckets maybe, or perhaps the kind that joint compound comes in, I don’t know. The ones with the handles.

The sight of those daffodils each year always captivated me. I would get really excited, and buy giant armfuls of them to take home and stuff into every conceivable fancy thing I owned that could pass as a vase. Silver pitchers, porcelain teapots, those vintage glass coffee carafes that hostesses in the 50’s would serve from, the coffee warmed by a tea light when not in use (I used to collect those). Anything.

However, something just wasn’t the same with them when I brought them home. I wouldn’t necessarily say I was dissatisfied with how they looked, but I didn’t get the same kind of feeling looking at them festooned around my apartment as I did when I would see them on the sidewalk - haphazardly shoved into a filthy, scuffed up bucket.

When I would chance upon them on the street, their yellow eyes winking up at me through the dappled sunlight from the awning, I would be filled with such a longing. For what, I couldn’t tell you, but the feeling would be so intense that I sometimes felt like my heart would burst, just from looking at them. It wasn’t sadness though, oh no. Quite the opposite actually. Back in my apartment, they were still as beautiful, but something intangible was lost in the transition from bodega sidewalk to coffee table, piano top, and nightstand.

I think what it was is that on the street they had a sort of accidental beauty in the careless way they were displayed, which was disrupted when I would bring them home.

And that is why I don’t buy daffodils anymore. I just enjoy them when and wherever I chance upon them.