06: When the Flowering Almond Blooms

Copyright © 2007¹

Chapter 6 of the book
Boyhood Memories & Lessons
by
Isaiah Reid

Assuming that Isaiah Reid was referring to
Prunus triloba truncata,
here is a photographic example.²

By one of the subtle laws of association, memory carries me back over a vista of more than fifty years. The link which serves for this connection is a little flowering almond in bloom. When we first came to our home in Dallas Center three years ago, a cousin sent me from the old hills of our childhood some shrubbery and some cuttings to plant out in “Sunnyside.” Among the cuttings which grew was this flowering almond. This is the first year that it has bloomed. It presents a beautiful little column of miniature flowers, about two feet high. They are mainly white, but bear marks as if the pinks or roses had been kissing them and left ruby stains of the softest tinge. At the top, and interspersed among the infant roses of this column, the new lanceolate leaves are showing in delicate green. Almost over it a young cherry is tossing its snowy petals about it, as if to hurry them out of the way of the growing foliage. A few days since the plums lost their glory. More than a week since, the early tulips opened their gorgeous cups to the sky, and two weeks before that the crocus beds lost their gold and white and penciled bars of blue, and the hepaticas, transplanted from the woods, hurried away as if pursuing winter to his northern home. The early apple blossoms and the almond keep their own calendar time together, while the lilacs are about halfway in full glory.

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Fifty-three years ago,³ in the home of my childhood, the floral calendar was just about the same, though it was earlier in the year than it is here in Central Iowa. It was the second week in April. The dogwoods had bleached from rich buff to wavy white. The June berries, scattered here and there on steep hillsides, had heralded the advent of the tree blooming and dropping their robes of white. The sugar maples hung in conspicuous tassels of greenish yellow. The buckeyes along the streams had already donned a summer wealth of foliage. The oaks and beeches had broken bud and the miniature leaves were showing. The grass was green and everything shone all in the tender green of God’s renewal of floral nature. The birds were happy. The world seemed to rejoice and carry joy everywhere.

There was a heavy rain during the night, which kept up till near noon. The water roared as it ran down all the little and larger runnels among the hills. Some of the “wet weather springs” rushed water sufficient to run a small mill for a day. The streams rose rapidly. After dinner, the rain having ceased, and the sun coming out, Father sent my older brother and me down to a farm he had on the creek about two miles away, to see if the fences were carried away by the rising of the water. We went afoot. We were young and full of life. The world was fresh-washed by the rain; the sun seemed to triumph over the wetness, and was actively at work putting everything into normal order after the disturbance of the rain. The birds sang happy choruses. New life and joy broke forth from earth and sky.

But we could not even dream of what was taking place at home while we were leisurely, like all boys, making our way towards the lower farm. There are other and harder storms than those which bring wind and thunder and floods. Before we were but part of the way from home, our nearest neighbor came riding after us with his horse in full gallop. Sad news he had to bring. He did not know, I suppose, how to break such word as he had to give, for he was as much confounded as we were. Having said the words, he turned his horse and hurried away. We turned homeward, but dumb with grief and mystery. There were five of us boys.⁴ Then there was a little sister, Mary Isabella, then a little over four years old, her father’s idol, her mother’s darling, and our pet. The blow had fallen on her.

She had gone out to gather eggs. In climbing over a rail-fence which had lately been repaired with some heavy, green rails laid on top, she had evidently pulled a rail off by her weight and it had fallen on her neck. So they had found her a little after. But the spirit had gone home to God. When we went in, the house was all in commotion. “Mary I.,” as we called her, lay dead on the table, and the house was full of crying and tears. Father saw us and said, “Come here, children! This is death.” He could scarce say more. I do not think I can ever forget his look, nor the blanched face quenched in death. I had never seen death before, though I was thirteen years old. Friends had died, but I had not been there. And had I been, it would not have been like this, for this was at home. The unwelcome messenger had come into the home once before, but it was before my time.⁵

I cannot describe my feelings or thoughts at the time. I seemed dazed and confounded. I know I felt so grieved that sometimes I had been unkind to my sister. I could not understand Father’s grief, and yet I see that his grief made me comprehend the greatness of the loss more than all else. The next day we carried the dear little body over to that same plain little log-church cemetery, and there laid it away—gone from human vision forever.

That was fifty-three years ago last month.⁶ What would it have been to us had she stayed with us? What would it have been to her? But what must it have been to her there all this half century? After all, why do we cling to life here so much? Looking at what I have passed through, what I have suffered, what endured, how illy I have made my way through all that has come to my life these years, who dare say but hers was the better lot?

I remember the sorrow going to the church following that little coffin. I do not remember the way back so much. I saw nothing of the spring glory that lay all about us. I do not remember to have heard the birds sing, though all I have previously described was crowding on us on every side. Human life, after all, is the great consideration in this material world. Sweet prospects, sweet birds, and sweet flowers all sink into forgetfulness in the presence of life with its wonderful transitions. When “Mary I.” died the forest wore crepe. The birds sang dirges. The clouds forgot to dip themselves in sunset. The fields dimmed in significance.

The gravestone of little Mary I. Reid.
The inscription reads:
MARY . I
daughter of
T&J [Thomas & Jemima] REID
Died Apr 9 1849
Æ 4 yrs 3 mo.⁷

When we went home, it seemed as if she must be there. There were her playthings, and her clothes, her shoes. Out there under the shade of the elm, the pin oak, and the redbud, we played again and again. No place could we see the familiar face. No place could we hear her voice. Father went out to some necessary cares, sad and slow. Mother went here and there, silent, tearful, lost to all by the great sorrow of her heart. Out in the garden the flowering almond bloomed. Every stem was a pillar of floral display. Every twig was a plume. On some the blush of the apple bloom had seemingly fallen. On others the life of the pink and the rose had distilled their choicest shades of life. But since that day I never see one of these little shrubs but memory links it with the translation of my little sister. Ever since, the flowering almond has been blooming. But that April day, 1849, when Mary I. died, was, and ever will be, the “Time When the Flowering Almond Blooms.”

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