Guest Post by Diane Lowman
Note from Kerstin - Today’s blog is a guest post by a friend who commissioned the Sunflower Resilience bouquet drawing for her sister’s 60th birthday. Little did I know how many layers of meaning this project would have for Diane and her sister…
My younger sister, who had been largely housebound for the last two years courtesy of Covid and a diagnosis of breast cancer early on in the pandemic, would turn 60 this year.
We had so much to celebrate besides the milestone birthday: coming out of her lockdown and treatment shells almost made it feel like she was being reborn.
But how to fete someone so special to you, who you’ve known all your life, and are deliriously happy to still have? None of us need any more stuff. Most people I know are trying to purge the years’ material accumulations.
And then I met Kerstin at an event in which we both participated, and began to follow her glorious work on social media.
A bespoke, not ephemeral bouquet of flowers seemed to me the perfect gift to mark the occasion. Some conspiring with my brother in law revealed her favorite flower: sunflowers.
I reached out to Kerstin and she ran with it from there, even somehow intuitively including thistle (which figured prominently in my niece’s bridal bouquet) and lilacs (my sister’s actual favorite flower:). How could Kerstin have known this gift would be both so personal and so meaningful?
The print itself is stunning and Kerstin added a personalized dedication/signature for my sister.
But I felt I needed 60 of something to mark the milestone, so she suggested notecards with a replica of the sunflower bunch, and, you guessed it, we decided on 60 of them! (My sister can now write lots of thank you notes in style!)
On opening the gift, she exclaimed “this is just my style,” and started talking about where she’d hang it - settling, most likely, on it being the first thing someone would see entering her home.
And as if that all were t enough, Kerstin had compiled a time lapse video of her creating the oeuvre, personalized for my sister, with a curated musical background.
PS. From Suzanne. She really didn’t want to do a photo. Hope you understand :
“ My quote “one of the best presents I’ve ever received. Kerstin’s really captured the beautiful essence of the sunflowers. It brings a smile to my face every time I look at it!’
About the author - Diane Meyer Lowman is an author who was selected as the Westport Poet Laureate from 2019 to 2022. She’s a specialist in Shakespeare and prolific in writing haiku poetry. Learn more at her website www.dianemeyerlowman.com.
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