My Daughter: A Love Note

By Emmy Lou Canedo
@emmylouvirginia

I remember gold, and orange, and red: colours on my eyelids as I soared with my sister on our backyard swing. I remember skinny legs with springtime bruises, and the prick of a wasp beneath my feet. I remember my favourite nightgown, thin white cotton, floating as I chased my brothers, who chased my father, who mowed the lawn in the sunset. In the deepening dusk, the heavy air treasured each scent from the day. Our feet slipped over the shredded grass, leaving stains across our kitchen linoleum as we tumbled indoors for a bedtime snack.

And yes, I remember our cherry blossom tree. My father planted it soon after we moved into this home. Every year it stretched nearer, and then one spring, it happened: a branch of pink blossomed into my window. I pushed aside the panes to let it in; a tree inside my bedroom. As the afternoon light filled my room with pink, I pulled a few frilly blooms for my green dresser.

I knew (because she’d often told me) that my mother had purchased that green dresser at a thrift store when expecting my oldest brother, and that she’d painted it and papered the drawers with great love, and that it had held all his baby things until the next baby came along, and the next, and then it had become mine. I thought sometimes of my mother, always surrounded by children, and wondered at the idea of her before she became a mother. I had never seen her with a paintbrush in her hand, and yet — here was the proof. My mother did not often say she loved us, and yet — here was this dresser.

I ran to the kitchen, a blossom in my hand. My mother looked up from folding dishcloths, or chopping vegetables, or sweeping the floor — the memory is hazy now. I told her how the cherry tree had bloomed into my room, and how it was the loveliest thing. I told her about the pink light. My face glowed, and hers glowed too, at my joy.

It was a day or two later, perhaps more. The buttercups I’d picked on a walk had overflowed their vase and dripped pollen onto the green dresser. I had a new mosquito bite on the underside of my toe. There was so much springtime bursting outside that I’ve mostly forgotten anything else, but I know the gardeners had come, and I remember my mother giving them hasty directions in between diapering the baby. I’d walked the block to our mailbox and back, barefoot because spring was here and I could. I’d paused to sniff our neighbour’s lilacs.

When I closed the heavy front door behind me and dropped the mail onto the kitchen counter, my mother was there, and I saw tears standing in her eyes. I was surprised by this: my mother did not cry. I stared at her, perplexed. What terrible thing had happened?

She took me in her arms. Her voice quavered as she told me how the gardeners had pruned my cherry blossom branches, and how they no longer grew through my window. She had been so busy, she said. She should have remembered; she should have told them. She was so sorry. She was so sorry.

And while she held me, I felt tears rising too, salty on my cheeks. I told her not to worry, and that it wasn’t her fault. I brushed it off, and I walked away, but my heart was light, and I don’t know why I didn’t tell her this: that my tears were not for the branches, lovely though they were. My tears were for my mother, and for how she loved me.

Photo essay by Emmy Lou Canedo. Emmy is a Vancouver-based family photographer who loves to photograph the intersection of real life and beauty. She's married to a wonderful man, has four beautiful children (and can often be found on the sofa, reading stacks of picture books to them while the toddler pulls her hair), and lives in a lovely old home with a red door and window boxes. Find her on her website or Instagram.