The Tulip Lady

When I was in Kindergarten we went on a field trip. Some twenty kids walked in two lines holding hands. We left school that morning. It was a surprise to us. All that Miss Mabry, our teacher, said was that we were in for a beautiful adventure that we would remember for a really long time. “Maybe all of our lives,” she said.
Everyone was excited and wondering what it could be. I was excited too. We all lived in the neighborhood. What surprise could there be that we didn’t know about?

We walked about eight blocks and turned the corner. We went to a house and into the back yard. You could not see the yard from the sidewalk or the street. Yet once we got past the hedge we were in another land. It was called Holland then. It was filled with tulips−reds, yellows, purples, striped ones and even black ones! Everyone’s eyes got as big as the plate in the lunchroom. Far in the back was a windmill made of stone with wide white blades that turned in the wind.

The Tulip Lady came out of her house through the kitchen door. She passed real wooden shoes on the stairs . She was wearing a real Dutch costume. She said to call her the Tulip Lady because her name too was hard for small children to say. She told us so many things about tulips and why her garden looked so beautiful. I could barely hear. My eyes were so bombarded with color.
I often think that was my best day in school ever. I can’t forget how amazing it was. A few years later out riding my bike on a spring day, I turned down a street and found her house again and I got to relive the field trip all over again. It amazed me to think that this dreamland had been within blocks of my house and I didn’t know.

I went back there this summer to see the Tulip Lady’s house one more time. My son was with me. I wanted to tell him the story, but times change and she’s gone. No wooden shoes sit on the stairs.

Miss Mabry was right though. I still remember. I still see pictures of tulips and the Tulip Lady whenever I close my eyes.

−me strauss Letting me be