I Love You the Yellowest

I stare, mesmerized by the swirls of thickly applied impasto. The bright and vivid colors warm me from the inside out. I am mesmerized. I have the painting burned into my memory, the lines, and the curves, the different stages of life the flowers are in. The brightest still life composed by a tortured mind. I touch the raised outline of the sunflower at the back of my neck.

The colors make me think of my mother. We moved all the time, but the kitchens were always yellow, like her mother’s and grandmother’s. They bring me back to my childhood, to sweet smells pouring out of ovens, and sunflowers in a red clay pitcher substituting for a vase. I just love the way they brighten up a room, she’d say as she cut the stems at a sideways angle, and it stuck. Generations of women whose favorite color was yellow, their favorite flowers sunflowers. It was as if I didn’t have a choice. Maybe I didn’t really want one.

The sunflower is the common name for the Helianthus. The flower is cultivated in temperate regions. In some tropical regions, they are used as food crops, feeding cattle, poultry, and even humans. Native to the Americas, they were used for food, medicine, dye, and oil as far back as 3000 B.C. The flowers tilt toward the sun during growth and stop doing so once they begin the blooming process, called heliotropism. The plants are not ideal for gardening - they spread rapidly. They are invasive. Flowers planted too close together will compete and fail to thrive to their full potential. They are a symbol of faith, loyalty, and adoration. To me, they are a symbol of her, a symbol of the women that came before me.

Jump to a summer studying art history abroad. I’m in London, at the National Gallery, staring into the depths of Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” and the next moment I’m in my mother’s kitchen. People snap photos, selfie sticks swirl around my head, and I think, haven’t they banned those things from museums yet? I think of the ways in which art is universal, the ways in which it can transport you to another time and place.

Jump back to my mother’s kitchen table, nursing books stacked high, yellow-lined notepads with her loopy, illegible handwriting. A Stevie Wonder CD plays from the beat-up stereo, the one we had to tape the lid down for it to play. She dances around the tiny kitchen, singing “Isn’t She Lovely”. I smell the brown sugar cinnamon crumbles that top her famous blueberry banana bread. She was in the newspaper for it once, pictured displaying a fresh lovely loaf of it at our kitchen table, next to a vase full of sunflowers. It’s so delicious and easy, and my kids love it, the article quotes. Everything was for us. She’s never liked sweets.

A poem I wrote in the 4th grade hangs framed on the yellow wall, all typed up, bordered with tiny fake scrapbook sunflowers. I Love You the Yellowest, a gift I gave her for Mother’s Day. I didn’t know at the time that reading and writing were something to be good at. My mother displayed the poem on the wall, she made me feel I had something to be proud of. My mother has always been proud of me. I’ve always been proud of her. She inspires me, then and now.

Jump to our visits to Savannah, Georgia when my brother and I were kids. We would stay at the Best Western in cheap rooms that smelled of stale cigarettes and cleaning spray. It didn't matter much; we were out and about all day anyway. My mom is a planner, and every day with her was like summer camp. We were always going to learn something. I remember going to the museum to see Forrest Gump’s bench. It was roped off, and there were signs indicating that it was not to be touched. She waited till no one was around, then said to my brother, Ricky, hurry quick, go sit on the bench, and I’ll take a picture! He did, and we got away with it, giggling to ourselves over this minor rule broken, our little secret.

Jump to the day it hit me. When you're a child, you may see it, but you don't realize all the shit your parents went through. When I became an adult, I realized I couldn't imagine having been her. I’m in school, I’m taking too many classes, I’m working full-time, I’m stressed. I think of my mom, not much older than I am now, two kids, two serving jobs, and trying to complete a nursing degree, all on her own. A single mother who got a whopping $600 a month in child support, less than what I pay for rent now. I call her and thank her; I cry for her. She tells me to stop. It wasn't easy but it was worth it. She wouldn't take it back for the world. It made her stronger, and she says she sees the ways it made me stronger, too. I work hard, I never give up, I follow my dreams. She’s proud of the ways I’m like her.

Sometimes the ways we’re alike drive her crazy. We’re tough as nails but stubborn as hell. We butt heads on things we don’t agree on, and when a fight escalates there’s no saying who will call the other back to say that they were wrong and apologize. It could take days, but typically it’s me. She worries for me; she nitpicks my decisions. I tell her that her opinions aren’t facts, they’re feelings. I tell her to let me figure things out for myself. She hates when I say that. She has so many feelings because she wants my life to be better than hers. She wants me to be able to do and see more. She thinks nothing, and no one, is good enough for me. Sometimes this frustrates me, sometimes it pushes me to demand and expect more for myself. It’s a push and pull. She wants me close but she also wants more for me.

Jump to Vincent van Gogh’s grave, the greenery, and ivy growing all around it. The overwhelming sadness you just can’t shake. So close to the wheat fields he painted almost every day during his time in Auver-Sur-Oise. Buried right next to his brother Theo, his biggest supporter. Visitors bring gifts, spare paint brushes, tubes of oil paint, dainty little sunflowers. As if, when no one's looking, he will come to collect them and create another masterpiece. You can tell how much he means to us.

Jump to Amsterdam, the Van Gogh Museum of Art. The fields and fields of sunflowers, as if they represent him as if they represent me. I dream of visiting, following his footsteps through the Netherlands, and into France. My own version of a pilgrimage.

Jump to the day I convinced her to get a tattoo before I headed off to Europe. It was both of our firsts; I couldn't believe how easy it was. I’d decided I wanted one, but it would be better to get this one with her. It’s our thing. We both got sunflowers outlined in black ink on the back of our necks. She wanted it there so that no one can see it at work - she can cover it with her hair. I complain that its placement is pointless. You can’t even see it yourself; you just have to remember it’s there. She’s more reserved than I am. She claims to love my independence, but I know sometimes it frightens her. She laughs when we enter the edgy tattoo parlor. “You can go first.” So I do. We get drinks after. I marvel at how amazing it is that as I become an adult, we’re not just mother and daughter, we’re best friends.

I am her sunflower; she is my sun. I reach up to her, I turn to her, I grow. I wonder when I’ll bloom, but know I will never not need her.

Jump to today. I’m twenty-three years old, it’s 2019. We live in different states now. I moved to Savannah, her favorite place in the world. At least I know this way she’ll visit me all the time. I remember the day she left when I moved in. She didn't cry. She just said she’d be back soon.

I miss her, so I go to the florist. I pick just the right bouquet. Some sunflowers are wide, open, some are almost closed. I return to my apartment and cut the thick stems at an angle. I put the flowers in the vase. They look like the sun, they look warm, they look like my mother’s face. I take out my phone. I call her.