I HAVE A CONFESSION. You know how sometimes you get something stuck in your head and every now and then, even years later, it's still there, coming to the surface at the recollection of some similar stream of consciousness? Like there is some kind of arcane association going on? Well, now that you're going, "what are you talking about, Grace?" I'll explain.
I was thinking about what's blooming in the garden right now and the first flower that came to me was Daphne odora, those sweet, lemony-scented star-shaped jewels that adorn a smallish evergreen shrub in February and March. You know the one...
Then, while pondering the merits of my Daphne, I heard a voice in my head that went,
"Daff-nee, Oh, Daff-neeee..." And I was like,
Hmm...where is this coming from?
I do love my Daphne but this voice was not mine. It was from my past...my distant past. And then without any real prompting on my part, just a teeny tiny hint, likely fueled by my recent trip to the (figurative) basement to unearth my boxed-up history... a TV show... A show I used to watch...
With the Internet at my fingertips, I followed those inner promptings, allowing Google and then Wikipedia to sate my curiosity. After reading the plot and characters, I discovered her!
DAPHNE
One of the characters from the soap opera...Dark Shadows.
And the voice I was hearing must have been the desperate utterings of...
...Barnabas!
Barnabas, calling out to his beloved Daphne in some kind of come-hither unrequited desperation.
Hmm... But it wasn't that simple because it was a soap and it was convoluted and mysterious and twisted. This was what I learned from Wikipedia anyway. I was between the ages of 6-11 when the soap aired from 1966 to 1971. Although I'm sure I was incapable of following the story line, I loved the show. It was creepy and sinister and scary. Despite a long-ago voice stored in the recesses of my mind, mostly what I remember from back then was trying to see the characters through a sans-cable, snowy black and white.
But years later, hardly unrequited, my beloved Daphne is in living color and perfumes my room and makes me happy.
As always,
