In the front yard of my home is a tree I call the tulip tree. It’s a yellow bird magnolia, and for a brief moment in the spring, each blossom turns into what looks like a yellow tulip. It might last a few days, maybe a week or more depending on the weather, but when it happens, the whole tree explodes like Amsterdam’s best, a tulip festival all its own, hundreds of bulbs showing out like silky petaled sunshine.
When I bought my home it was in the fall, and the tree had returned to its subdued self. There was no mention during the home showing of the surprise I was in for in spring, when the tree decides that it has had enough of the ordinary, that it’s time to risk it all and be extraordinary.
In this, it’s not unlike other magnolias (and tulips, too), which are always among the earliest show-ers, at least here in the Midwest. “Precocious bloomers,” they’re sometimes called, putting out their flowers before the pollinator competition. On crisp spring mornings, you can see their furry buds swelling, just waiting to release their tulips on a warm day, before even the final frost date has passed. An early temperature spike and a freezing night can send the flowers falling shortly after they appear, a temporary carpet of yellow among the still-greening grass.
I’d never seen or heard of such a tree until it loudly announced itself, but magnolias as a whole are not uncommon. They are said to symbolize both beauty and resilience, a certain optimism that despite it all, it’s still worth showing out in this life. We all have something to offer, even something to delight, be it as simple as a laugh, or a capacity for love.
My home is on a fairly busy street, but this is also something I didn’t realize before buying it. The showings were on a weekday, scheduled perfectly between the morning and evening commute so that the traffic was subdued.
I suppose the turning lane should have cued me that this was no ordinary residential street. When I moved in for good, I was surprised to see a thousand cars a day go by, though ultimately it wouldn’t have changed my mind about the home.
And glad that it didn’t. During this brief week in early spring — the tulip tree’s week — I’ll stand on my front walkway steps and smell them as the cars pass by and see a middle-aged man with his nose in a flower, a slightly sweet scent that if they have their windows down they might even catch on the breeze as they speed by and wonder, what was that? As do many of those walking past who often pause, like me, to marvel, discuss it with their children, dog, or other walking companion.
As you get older, you begin to appreciate not the things that you might yet acquire but those which are already there, that come easy, and to some extent, that always were there, things you never had to work hard to cultivate or acquire in the first place. A little water in the early days and during the dry spells, but mostly just letting life do its work. Trees. Animals. Family. Friends. Flowers. The cars going by, they won’t always.
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