old new bulbs

Spring Tulips by Laura Tovar Dietrick

On the south side of my father’s house in Avalon NJ, in a bed of sandy dirt, there are daffodils. My “Aunt” Gladys Skillman gave my mother a box of the bulbs around forty years ago. Since then they’ve bloomed every spring and multiplied. Mom told me once that the bulbs came from Gladys’ father’s side of the family; the Hankins family farm in Pennsylvania. It’s as if these bulbs are an heirloom. I know they grew thickly and I wonder if Dad has thinned out the flower bed.