A Crown For When You Don't Feel Like a Queen

            It would be so nice if life always proceeded in an upward trajectory, wouldn’t it? If happy endings always remained happy, and fixing a problem meant the problem never returned. But I think we all know life isn’t like that: it is a roller coaster of getting better and then getting worse, and then getting better again, and lifting our heads above it all as often as we can, so we can see the magic that still threads through the world around us, and indeed, in us.

            I’ve been struggling with insomnia again. Thankfully it appears to be starting to get better, but I suspect it will be something I continue to struggle with at varying times throughout this pandemic and perhaps even beyond. Last Friday night, I had an especially challenging night, and woke up Saturday morning incredibly frustrated. You see, now that I am back to work at my day job, the weekends are my only time to get any good amount of creating or imaginative work done. And I was exhausted. I messaged my dear friend, Shveta, and asked her if I should still go to my favorite local park as I had planned, or just stay home. She replied, insisting I should put on my makeup, wear something that makes me feel beautiful, and go.

            So I did. I wore a new long and billowing floor length skirt I had just been given for my birthday and a cropped lightweight wrap with embroidery and belled sleeves. I dug out a flower crown frame that I created in early spring, wrapped in dried ivy, and I cut a selection of calendula blooms and six cheerful yellow daylilies, tucking them into the crown. I tried it on in my car, and as I glanced in the rear view mirror while backing out of my driveway to (sigh) indeed go to the park (hmmph), I realized the daylilies looked like a queen’s golden coronet in my hair.

            When I reached the park, I grabbed my tripod and headed around the educational building toward my favorite nature trail. I didn’t get that far. As soon as I rounded the corner of the structure and saw the meadow beyond, my jaw dropped. I had just been there a week before, and though there were a few sweet flowers, it was nothing like the explosion of yellow and white and summer blossoms that greeted me. I set down my tripod, kicked off my shoes, and stood at the edge of the wildflower meadow, camera remote clicking away.

            Rain was very much in the forecast, and the air and clouds were thick with the electricity that precedes a heavy Ohio rainfall, but I grinned at the sky as my long skirt billowed out around me, and my crown squeaked out cheerful susurrations of petal on petal at my brow. The field whispered “shhhhhhhhh” as the winds ebbed and flowed, and my hair waved around me in tendrils that I didn’t even try to tame.

            I was so alive in that moment, and when the skies split open and the rain poured down, I giggled as I grabbed my skirt hem, my tripod, and my shoes, and ran to the porch of the building just a few feet away. When the short-lived downpour ended, I took a few more photos at the meadow, and then walked about fifty yards away to visit the Clootie Tree along the path I had originally planned to walk. Smiling at the magical tree, I tucked the remaining yellow daylilies that hadn’t fallen out of my makeshift crown into tiny holes in her bark, like tucking a wildflower behind a girlfriend’s ear.

            The moral of the story here? Sometimes, of course we are allowed to give ourselves permission to take a break, to not do something we planned to do. But sometimes…sometimes it’s worth it to do it anyway. And maybe it will bring you more hope and joy than you expected.