Growing up on a soybean farm before the widespread use of herbicides involved a summer ritual called walking beans. This innocuous sounding activity was anything but a fun stroll in a field. Walking beans meant going down rows of beans cutting or preferably pulling (so you get the roots too and it wont grow back) anything that was not a soybean plant. I was 7 or 8 when I first participated in this family activity. I got my first bean hook, think a rake handle with a sharpened curved, flat blade at the bottom. Dad had to saw off a foot or so of the wooden handle so that I didn’t hit myself in the head with it. We would head out to the field about 6 so that it wasn’t unbearably hot yet, and after dad sharpened the blades we headed down the rows. The number of rows I had to clean at one time grew as I grew and became more adept with the bean hook, but to start it was just one row at a time, by the time I was in high school, I could handle six rows or so at a time. The goal was to cut out all the weeds- the button weeds, cockleburrs and the dreaded sunflowers. Man I hated those things. They had long roots and thick stems. Pulling them out was impossible for me most of the time, and cutting the more mature ones took several whacks with the hook. I never saw the beauty of that particular plant, only the fact that it was my sworn enemy that kept me from getting to the end of the row. I can still remember how hot and sweaty that job was and the blisters on my hand from the rough wooden handle.
And then I went off to college and never went back to the farm to work, only to visit. Walking beans became obsolete with the advancement of Round Up and other toxic chemicals that would keep the sunflowers from growing there to start with. Ironically while In college in South Dakota, I met my best friend who is from Kansas (Kansas whose state flower is you guess it… the sunflower.) I learned that sunflowers are not just a weed to be hated, but a commodity to be grown, harvested and sold. I was amazed by this, driving down to her family ranch I saw miles and miles of my childhood enemy standing well over 6 feet tall with huge heads of brown seeds with those bright yellow petals. And then I learned something amazing about sunflowers. They actually follow the sun, every single flower moves throughout the day, so their face is in full sunlight. How incredible is that? My hatred of that stupid plant that I had dreaded for years started to evaporate. I began looking at the plants every chance I could. Sure enough, its petals were bathed in sunlight. Eventually the hatred melted away to respect for these majestic flowers and their perpetual positive attitudes (sunny attitudes one might say :).
Life moved on and I made fewer and fewer trips to Kansas as my life got busier and busier and I saw fewer and fewer sunflowers in my life. Still when I would see one or two of them here and there they made my heart smile. Then 4 years ago, I found the daughter I had shared through adoption 27 years ago. She was a California girl with a sunny smile whose favorite color was yellow. Only person I have known in my life who loves that color. Tragically, four months after finding her she passed away. Her aunt created the most wonderful celebration of life for the beautiful blond with the amazing heart and gorgeous smile. As I walked into the church there were buckets and buckets of sunflowers, one for each person to take away with them so that they would look at it and remember the girl who loves yellow and who always found the sunny side of whatever situation she was looking at.
What if sunflowers are the universe’s way of reminding up to follow the sun ourselves and always see the sunny side and leave the shadows behind us?
amazinglyawesomeme 