I used to imagine that the front stoop of my grandma’s house was only there for the family of Hollyhock dolls that grew on either side of the cement steps. I was only allowed to pick a few each season. She showed me how to pluck the flower from the stem, flip it upside down and push an unopened bud through the then top to make a head that rested above the pink flowing dress. And for the rest of the afternoon, this small gathering of elegant ladies danced outside the entrance reserved just for them.

I gave them the voices to compliment each other. “How lovely is your pink dress!” “And yours is beautiful!” I danced them together like my mother once did at the Lakeside Ballroom with her cousin Janet. And the music from the transistor radio scratched in and out as I adjusted the antenna in the summer breeze. The lessons of last summer were forgotten. I had no fear of the wilting dresses. I only played. And played, believing that all beauty on Rueben and Elsie’s farm would ever remain.

I wasn’t wrong. Yes, the flowered dresses lay almost flat by the end of the day, but decades and countries away, the beauty remains. Yesterday, in the French countryside, she showed me the one Hollyhock flower that somehow grew between the century old crack of the house entrance. I wasn’t surprised. I had enough French words to tell her of how I made the pink ladies on my grandma’s stoop. We both smiled and touched the rhythm of her little pink dress.

I wrote in a poem, “This year… let’s love like no lessons have already been learned…” Of course we have to grow and educate and evolve. But some “lessons,” like those that deal with lost love, disappointment, unreached expectations — to keep our pink ladies dancing, we have to let those go. The heart stoops must remain clear and ever hopeful.

Countless things grew on Rueben and Elsie’s farm. Again and again. And the beauty will ever remain. I wake to this morning sun, and keep on dreaming.