If you get the reference already, then you are a kindred spirit. For those who don’t, I like you anyway (but really, you need to sit yourself down and watch some Dr. Who).
In the Dr. Who episode Vincent and the Doctor, Amy and the Doctor spend a few days with Vincent van Gogh, with whom Amy has a flirtation. At the end of the episode, Amy comments that had they ever had children, the children would have had really red hair: brighter than sunflowers.
During the summer when I started my relationship with T, I worked near a small community garden. The garden was packed with colour; something was blooming pretty much year-round. I spent every lunch hour in that garden, often on the phone with T.
That was the most intense summer of my life. I experienced emotions I’d never felt before–the feeling of falling in love with someone new while almost losing my partner of eight years, then learning how to love and cherish both of them with all my heart. The rediscovery of sex and the reawakening of my authentic self, which I’d packed away and hidden at least 10 years before. I felt my heart stretch and grow more than I’d imagine it could, until finally it burst open, with the realization that it had no limits, that my love was all I was, and there was no separation between me and anything else.
Late that summer, the sunflowers bloomed. I remember looking up at one sunflower one day, set against the blue sky, during a flush of love and hormones and joy and excitement. I felt pierced by the colours of the flowers and the sky, which at that moment seemed the brightest things I’d ever seen. Since then, sunflowers have been the colour of love to me.
And so the name of this blog: Brighter than Sunflowers.