Member-only story
Mostly Sunflowers
A Little Story About Joy
Suzanna’s life begins the day her mother’s ends
In that moment, she sheds her old skin and grows a new one
Her dutiful daughter days are over
She lets her hair grow
Cashes in her RSPs
Sells the condo and the car
And books a one-way flight to France
She leases a 300-year-old farmhouse in a small village just outside of Provence.
It is drafty
The roof leaks
And sometimes there are mice in the pantry
But she loves the sound of the wind in the olive trees
And the colour of her kitchen walls
And the way the pale yellow light spills across her bed every morning
She befriends a donkey named Pierre
Paints en plein air (mostly sunflowers)
And rides an old blue bicycle to the village to buy wine from a kind-faced man (with whom she will eventually share that pale morning light)
Suzanna will stay in the farmhouse until the money runs out
But unlike her former self, she won’t give that a second thought
Because these days
Suzanna sleeps the sleep
Of the truly enchanted
