The daffodils are in bloom. When I was a boy on our farm, we called them Easter flowers. The north side of our front yard was full of them—big, lovely, yellow, double blooms. I left them there when I sold the farm, and, with them, I thought I was leaving behind the footsteps of all the generations of my family—the fathers and sons, the mothers and daughters, the grandparents and grandchildren, the uncles and aunts.

On occasion now, I drive the countryside, and, when I see clumps of daffodils blooming in a field or along a gravel road, I know that once upon a time there was a house and a family and all the sorrows and joys that accompanied their living. When I see a daffodil these days, I see much more than a flower. I see my family and our farm and all that happened there. I imagine the day when my father, a thirty-eight-year-old bachelor, brought his bride—my mother—to take up a life with him. Four years later, quite by accident, I came along.

How many evenings, when dusk fell, did I shout my name just to hear it echo back to me? How many nights did I listen to the whippoorwills calling from our woodlands? We had a native American burial mound in those woods. I still have a few arrowheads we found in our freshly plowed fields.

One night, I stood in the dark and waited for the sound of my father’s tractor coming back from one of those fields. In the quiet, the wind rose, and I felt the presence of someone, or something, all around me. A chill came down my neck. I imagined the spirits of those who had originally claimed that land moving stealthily from the fencerows to our farmyard. I thought of my father out there in the dark, working late to get a crop in, and even though I couldn’t have articulated this then, now I see how I sensed the impermanence of us all.

Daffodils bloom for only a short time. Their beauty, then, is precious for how quickly they leave us. Eventually, we leave as well. Or do we? Each time I see daffodils in bloom, I imagine somewhere in the spirit world my father still works his land, my mother plants zinnias and marigolds in her garden, and I’m still a little boy on our farm, cupping an Easter flower, kneeling to press my nose to its yellow bloom so I can breathe in its distinctive scent. I can imagine it even now. It never leaves me. Never, never, never.