My parents divorced when I was ten, and a few years later my mother moved my brothers and I to Texas to follow a job opportunity. The following summer, we spent a couple of weeks with my dad and step-mom back in Little Rock, and a traumatic experience I had there have imbued daisies with a special meaning every since.

It was the last day of our visit, so I was already feeling sad about the prospect of leaving… I was a Daddy’s Girl, and the oldest child, and very empathetic to the stress it put my dad under for us to come and go, not to mention my own feelings of loss that I re-experienced every time the plane took off or touched down.

When my step-mother was leaving for the day for work she asked me to run a load of laundry. If we were watching a horror film, there would have been ominous foreshadowing music playing as she said “Here’s the bleach, just add a capful to the load.”

But it wasn’t a film, so I had no warning of the terror and gnashing of teeth that I would experience approximately one hour later.

I honestly don’t remember if I had done much laundry before this incident – I am guessing I hadn’t, because I vaguely remember my step-mom being surprised to hear that I was not familiar with the process. The fact of my inexperience became glaringly obvious when, after the spin cycle ended, I pulled out a load of laundry speckled with bright white spots and splatters that had been created when I poured chlorine bleach directly onto the clothes in the washer before closing the lid.

As I pulled out piece after piece of wet, ruined clothing I started realizing that almost all of the things I usually saw my step-mom wearing were there. Wrap skirts, jeans, tee shirts… I dissolved into tears as I comprehended the extent of the devastation. Replacing the bulk of an entire wardrobe is not an easy financial burden for anyone, but I knew that it was lean times for my dad, and the thought of my ignorant mistake causing him to spend money he wasn’t planning to spend horrified me.

I was blubbering as I called my dad to tell him what I had done. He reassured me (probably glad that I was telling him I ruined some clothes but my brothers and I still had all our limbs) and told me he would call my step-mom to let her know.

When he got home from work that day, my dad presented me with a huge bouquet of white daisies, which caused me to promptly resume my blubbering. Dad was not one to say a lot of sweet, mushy dad-things when we were younger – actions spoke louder than words for him I think. So those daisies, bursting with happiness and hope, were like a dictionary full of words of support and love from him that day.

Maybe that was a subconscious reason I used daisies at my wedding to my first husband as well… the promise of happiness in the years ahead was definitely important for me to project that conflicted day; to others as well as myself. To this day, daisies remind me of the love of my dad, back when I called him “daddy”.