Heartbroken, Homebroken

If you know me at all, you know that yellow things make me happy: the sun, lemons, the huge yellow heart on telegram and somehow even mustard. So of course, when the pandemic hit and I picked up gardening, I had to plant sunflowers.

I remember carefully opening the packet of seeds, dividing them into groups of five and carefully placing each group in a small pot. A couple of days later, I forced everyone in my house to go outside to look at the little, fragile, green sprout in the pot. Every day after that, I would excitedly check on them and run back into the living room to update my roommates on how many new leaves had appeared. Two weeks later, when the seedlings were strong enough, I grabbed my gloves and my tiny shovel and transplanted them into the garden bed. My clothes were covered with brown patches of soil and my heart with yellow patches of sunshine. Six weeks later, the buds had formed, and the plants were almost my height (low bar, I know). I took pictures and sent them to my dad who had planted sunflowers in his garden too. But before the buds unfolded into yellow petals, my boyfriend and I broke up. And the following day, a worker from our leasing company came to mow the lawn and inadvertently cut my sunflowers.

When I looked from my window and saw a perfectly mowed lawn in the place of my sunflowers, the grief really settled in. I started crying hysterically and all I could think of or talk about was losing my sunflowers. In response to my screaming over the phone, my dad told me: “it’s okay habibi, I planted some here too, you can have them”. Although we both knew my meltdown had nothing to do with sunflowers, I found comfort in that statement. Somewhere, there were still sunflowers blooming for me.

If home is where the heart is, then a synonym for heartbroken should be homebroken. That’s exactly how I felt. Philly without sunflowers didn’t feel like home anymore. Maybe Lebanon, with its sunflowers still standing, could make me feel a little less homebroken.

It did in so many ways. But now, it’s time to come back and start planting new seeds. While I know it isn’t sunflower season yet, I find reassurance in remembering that I have loved ones willing to shed a little sunshine on my difficult days.

(Also daffodils are in season starting February so a yellow garden is still possible).