Sweet Magnolia

Reflections on my daughter's third birthday.

Growing up in the Midwest, I didn’t really learn about magnolia trees until we moved to Nashville almost 10 years ago. I don’t even know if I knew they existed. How sad.

I remember the first time I walked toward the back entrance of the Opryland Hotel for a work event and I thought, “Wow, these are some beautiful fake trees they have out here,” noticing how artificially perfect the leaves looked and felt, thinking they must be plastic.

They weren’t fake trees. They were just magnolias with their stiff, beautiful green leaves that maintain their color year-round and bloom giant white flowers in the warmer months.

A few years ago, before a gym was built around the corner from my house, my primary means of exercise was taking a walk around the neighborhood during my lunch hour while working from home.

Sometimes I would walk a couple of miles at the park that connects to my neighborhood, but most days I only had enough time to walk around the rectangle of my neighborhood, going up and down each of the four cul-de-sacs along the route. Still today this walking route is called “a lunchtime walk” in our house, even when we walk it as a family in the evenings on days we can’t get over to the park.

On the first cul-de-sac along the lunchtime walk, there are two giant, beautiful magnolia trees that bloom the biggest white flowers from spring through the end of summer. I remember noticing the trees the first time I ever made the walk around our neighborhood in the spring of 2017. They are the highlight of the lunchtime walk. Except, of course, when a certain maple tree on the other side of the neighborhood is aflame with fall colors in early September each year. 

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We found out we were pregnant for the first time in the middle of summer 2019 after months of asking and hoping and waiting amid a tumultuous season of life. We had always known what name we would give a boy, but neither Susie nor I had a name picked out for a girl. By the fall of that year we knew we would be having a girl in the spring of 2020, totally unaware of the infected world that would welcome her.

Some time around when we found out our baby would be our daughter, I went on one of my routine lunchtime walks and the magnolia trees caught my attention as usual. I wondered if the trees could provide a name as beautiful as their flowers. I remember pitching the name “Magnolia” to Susie, thinking she would reject it as maybe too old-fashioned or too southern. But she liked it, and so it was.

I’ve written to Maggie regularly since before she was born, and I wrote on November 19, 2019:

Magnolia Grace Martin. Maggie, as I am betting most people will call you. I hope you like your name. We had a couple of name ideas, but that one was our favorite. When your mom and I moved to Tennessee from Indiana, we fell in love with the magnolia trees down here. Magnolia trees produce some of the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen. They are tough trees that survive the winter and don’t wither like some trees. Maggie, you are beautiful and strong. I loved you long before I knew your name.

When I look in my Maggie’s eyes, I see someone who doesn’t know any better, and I realize that it’s for the best. Knowing things is the worst.

When you become a parent, you obsess about how you will form your child, and you don’t consider how much your kid will form you.

One of Maggie’s favorite ways to say she likes something is to say it “is very special to me.” Usually she says this about things that she knows were given to her either as gifts or when she asked for them.

Sometimes fruit snacks are very special to Maggie. Sometimes stuffed animals are very special to Maggie. Sometimes a hotel key card I brought home from a work trip is very special to Maggie.

Maggie reminds me to see how the most basic things, especially when they are gifts, are truly special. She reminds me not to take things for granted.

My daughter is teaching me how to be a better person even as I teach her how to be a person.

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The night before Maggie was born, Susie and I took a walk down to the first cul-de-sac to visit the magnolia trees. It was as far as Susie could make it that night, understandably. I plucked a leaf off of one of the trees and have kept it since.

The Leaf

I wrote to Maggie that night:

Maggie, you are my daughter. I have wanted to be a dad for so long, and when you are born tomorrow, my life will change instantly. Life will never be the same. I can’t wait to introduce you to the world. You’re being born at such a beautiful time of year. Flowers are blooming. The sun is shining. It’s warm, but not too warm. The birds are singing their beautiful songs. The world is waiting for you to arrive, Magnolia Grace. We can’t wait to meet you.

As she blooms, it is clear that Maggie has inherited my tenacity and Susie’s heart.

Strength and beauty. 

A Magnolia if there ever was one.

Happy 3rd birthday, Mae. You are very special to me.