More than the magnolias: Home and memory in AC
This time of year, the flowers start to bloom. In the bushes, through cracks in the cement and in the trees. As a bit of a floral fanatic, I’m often asked what my favorite flower is.
Turns out, my favorite flower is also my favorite tree: magnolia. Magnolias are my favorite–not because of their large, lush, elegant flowers, but because of their place in my life, my family and my home.
More than three decades ago, my mother moved from Southern California to American Canyon to live with my father in their first home. My grandparents, who remained in Los Angeles, would come up to help make their new house and city feel like home. One of the things they did was help with the landscaping. This included a baby magnolia tree, planted by my mom’s father, my Grandpa Hanford. It had been there for as long as I could remember.
In its baby state, it was just a twig of a tree. Nothing particularly special to a kid like me at the time. It was on the side of the house, so I didn’t pay it much mind. That was, until one spring, when I saw its magnolias open for the first time. In its entirety, it may not have been a huge tree like the ones that gave me shade in the nearby park, but it bloomed.
I didn’t know trees could do that. Just tall enough, you could see it peeking over the fence from the front of the house. In those early years, those few weeks of bloom were the only time I ever paid the tree any mind. Without the flowers there, I didn’t care for it.
But as the tree grew, so did I. And I started to appreciate it more and more.
Going to school, making new friends and trying new things was exciting, but also scary. For a while, I thought everything had to be one thing or another — good or bad, rain or shine, happy or sad. When the flowers wilted and fell away, the leaves remained. They were a deep emerald green on one side and caramel brown on the other. Two sides of the same leaf. The leaves on our magnolia tree remind me that two things can coexist–beauty and shelter, softness and strength, holding steady in the wind.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but as a child, coming home every day was what made me feel safe enough to explore the world around me. It was that familiarity, our family, our routines, that made everything else feel possible.
That winter, when the leaves fell, it wasn’t just a twig that remained, but a trunk. Thicker, taller. While the flowers and leaves rode the wind and went through their changes, the trunk held them up. Steady. Foundational. Growing so that branches could reach new heights. Like my grandparents for my parents, like my parents for me.
A few months later, I would learn that my family would move.
And we wouldn’t be taking the magnolia tree with us.
No longer would we grow side by side.
We were gone before the next bloom.
But that didn’t matter. It wasn’t just the magnolia flower that I would miss, but the entire tree.
Weeks later, my family and I were driving past our old neighborhood and decided to cruise by our old house. Eyes wide, as though ready to take in something for a final time, I looked out the window to see how much had changed — everything had.
The plants in front of the house were different, the door wasn’t blue anymore. Even the house itself was painted another color. A quiet sadness fell over me, knowing what was once our home — our foundation, our sanctuary — was now someone else’s.
My dad must have felt the nostalgia in the air because he joked, “Should we buy this house instead?” My mom laughed. That made me smile.
In that moment, I realized home was never just the walls, the color of the paint, or the landscaping. Home is the people. The memories. The love. The support. The roots.
Just as I began to feel the memory of what our home looked like fade into the past, my mom noticed something.
“Aw, that’s nice. They kept the magnolia tree.”
There it was, on the side of the house, no longer just peeking over the fence, but rising above it, waving at me — and blooming.
