I am lying deep in the garden of my Californian home and  the March sunlight feels warm on my face.

Fragments of dappled light dance  through the trees and  with my eyes  half closed from the glare I  feel the shadows  move, fleeting across my face.  I stretch out  sleepily on a bed of wild flowers that have exploded in color, blossoming  and covering the grass like a blanket .

Spring has arrived and because of recent rain we have this unusual lushness and abundance . Here I lie in my field of gold, dozing, drifting in and out of sleep, I feel like a girl on a swing moving back and forth from from sun to shade.

The yellow mustard, golden in the afternoon sunshine moves gently in the breeze and suddenly my mind  not only sees the color but feels it,my heart expands and I am transported on a yellow bus of thought straight into memory. 

 Emotions clearly bring to mind  certain colors. I often associate green with envy, red with passion and of course being sad with feeling blue. But the color yellow will forever make me think of kindness . Here in my yellow field,on a Spring afternoon I think of that now  and it all flows easily back to me filling me with feelings, for  thoughts of kindness  have always led me  back on the road to my Father.
 
Memories of my Dad come pouring in. I absentmindedly pick a  flower or two and silently begin to weave them together.
My Father was every thing to me. He was a quiet man and  not given to big demonstrations of feeling yet  I know he felt things  deeply.He had a quiet dignity about him and after my Mother died, when I was only ten, he had done such a great job raising us on his own.

I grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1970’s during the height of the troubles. My Dad had been a school master and he encouraged me to focus and to work hard because  he knew my education would be my passport out.

It was because of his encouragement that I left home in the first place. With his blessing I spread my wings and flew from Derry to study in England. I went to Brighton and art college then on to London and Drama school. 

It was back in the 1980s and I was a student in London. I rented a room in one of those big Georgian Houses that had been converted into flats. In the absence of cell phones, which were not yet an essential part of our lives, the lodgers shared a black payphone in the chilly hallway by the front door. I was planning a trip home to Ireland to stay with my Father . My oldest brother was to be ordained into the Catholic priesthood that weekend,we joked that he would be known to us as “Father Brother”!

I knew the little triangular flags of many colors, hand made by the neighbours, were already hung out on the street I grew up on and a grand celebration had been planned. I telephoned my Father to confirm my travel arrangements. I dialled the number and at the sound of the beeps I inserted my coins .I heard his voice and felt safe.The sweet sound of his lilt was so comforting and familiar to me. We discussed that I would fly in  early  the next morning from Heathrow to Belfast. I would be picked up at the airport and be home in time for tea.

 Our climate in the North of Ireland is damp at the best of times. Still to this day when it rains in Malibu I affectionately call it a “Derry Day”.So that night before my trip ,my Father who was a man of few words ,said h e was glad I was coming home, he looked forward to seeing me and ever practical because of the damp he had  “hung my favorite yellow flannel sheets on the indoor line to air."

Yellow flannel, yellow flannel, yellow flannel, it sounds like one of those vocal warm ups they gave us in Drama School, when repeated fast they became such tongue twisters  that inevitably we’d stumble over the words,which felt like stones in our mouths and we’d burst out laughing. I am laughing now in my garden of  wild yellow  mustard  as I remember those  yellow flannel sheets. That night I told my Father I loved him and hung up  the phone. I walked up the hall to my room at the back of the house, my  little suitcase packed  for my trip,slightly frayed and  standing ready at the end of the bed. I fell asleep excited to be going home.

It must have been three or four in the morning when the guy from the front flat pounded on my door.”Wake up Irish” he yelled and “tell your bloody  family not to call in the middle of the night”. My heart skipped a beat and I was fearful as I walked slowly down the cold hallway in the dark and lifted the heavy receiver .I delayed a moment longer before I finally  whispered  hello.  They told me it was sudden, that his heart gave out .I did not know what to do.I did not know what to do. I must have said something. I must  have hung up the telephone. I know I slid down the wall and sat in the dark. I did not know what to do. I knew I could not sleep so I went back to my room and I made tea, I watched the sun come up and then I took the same flight  and carried the same little frayed suitcase that I would have taken anyway, though now my journey home took on a whole new purpose.

By the time I got to Derry his body was already returned to our brick row house for the wake. Our front door already displayed the black bow of mourning. In our loving Irish tradition we still lay out our dead in our living rooms for the great parade of friends and family and neighbors to come and pay their respects. The  triangular flags were  waving on our street  when I got there and  they seemed suddenly a sad reminder of a celebration gone wrong. An ordination and a funeral all on the same weekend. It did not seem fair.

I walked in our  little dark hallway and past the room where he lay. I was not ready yet to see him dead, needing first the  courage that  only comes from a cup of tea. Tea, the Irish solution to everything. So I slipped into our kitchen ,so familiar to me in everyway  and a vision took my breath away. For there hanging on the indoor line to air, were my favorite yellow flannel sheets , the last loving act of a  most thoughtful man. I held them to my face, breathed in their kindness and cried.

The sweetness of th e memory lingers in my mind and I feel it in my heart. Even now  I feel it,after so many years, when grief has already healed and been  transformed. In my minds eye I can still  faintly see the black bow on the front door ,the triangular flags waving in the gentle rain and then clearly ,brightly ,the yellow sheets of kindness on the indoor clothes line to air.

Instead of being saddened by loss I am filled with so much gratitude for all that I had. I am grateful for  the lessons learned and the kindness shared.For the power  of love,the love of an old man for his girl expressed, not through words but in one final  thoughtful gesture.

That love never goes away. I have learned this. I know this to be true. The Love remains forever, it becomes part of you, the best part of you.

I see little yellow flowers of kindness all around me blowing on a Californian breeze. 

The slam of the screen door brings me back to the present and my daughter appears running through the garden, all smiles and sweetness. I pick a little flower and hand it to her, she laughs and slips her hand in mine and we head back toward the house for a cup of tea.