By Michael Traynor
March 30, 2025
Every living creature has its own “day in the sun.” My grandmother Susan understood this well. She knew that in every life there are a few precious moments when our souls shine with the pure joy of being – no matter however brief and transitory such moments might be. Grandmother Susan called those instances the soul’s “day in the sun.”
Susan loved a tiny blue flower that blooms briefly and early in Spring. She cherished the day when its first star-shaped sky-blue blossom emerged in her garden. For her, it was the harbinger of all the new life to come. Every year, she memorialized and recorded the date upon when this first blossom appeared. She noted this as the flower’s “day in the sun.” In a touching way, this celebratory day each year also became a “day in the sun” for Sue herself.
Why did Susan get so excited over a Scilla, a mere bulbous perennial, when all this tiny flower does is lie dormant underground all year, building just strength to push upward to glimpse the light, before returning exhausted into the earth ? She admired the flower’s pluck!
When the very first blossom appeared – the bud most determined to reach the sun – she welcomed and congratulated it on its “mission accomplished.” On that first day, there may be just one or two blossoms. Over ensuing days, an explosion of blooms blankets the entire garden with its azure beauty – a sky-blue field of dreams. Their day in the sun is triumphant, loud, glorious! Then in the blink of an eye, their moment passes, fully supplanted, no trace. Life moves on.
Grandmother Susan had learned to love and respect the Scilla from her own Mother. (How far back this tradition span is anyone’s guess.) Susan passed on the tradition to her son, who then passed it on me. For the record, I recorded the first Scilla blossom this year in my own garden on March 9, 2025.
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The Scilla itself does not seek or demand any explicit human recognition. Scilla freely share its moment in the sun with us. To be sure, I recently asked the Scilla if it would be disappointed should the day come when a human like me no longer explicitly marks their first bloom. The Scilla assured me that would be fine. Scilla do not shine to receive their own personal recognition and glory. Instead, they do everything in love.
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Our own human experience Is not too different from Scilla. By any cosmological reckoning of time, a human life shines for only the briefest moment. Our mere handful of days in the sun are accompanied by long, hard-fought periods of endurance and suffering. We hope our time radiates beauty, joy, renewal, and solace — while leaving residual, enduring value to the world after our time ends. Life moves on regardless. We hope that by committing all our life-strength to this effort, we might in small ways have succeeded. Yet when our moment abruptly ends, we can only know that we were gifted with a day in the sun – and in using the gift, tried to do everything in love.
