The house I grew up in had a huge backyard. In the front of the yard, just outside my bedroom window, was a large oak tree. The kind of tree that you could imagine a kid or teenager climbing out of the window on to, if I had the kind of parents that required sneaking out of. Or, if I had been the kind of kid to climb a tree. Behind the tree was an old jungle gym, and beyond that, a dogwood tree and honeysuckle bushes. In the middle were two small rose bushes and when I was older my dog’s ashes were buried in between them. The back part of the yard, hidden from site by the oak tree, was allowed to grow wild. Our backyard butted up against other people’s backyards and at one point I discovered that you could go from our backyard to other people’s backyards and wind up a block or two away without ever seeing anyone else.

Next to an old, unused carport was a small patch of wild daisies. In my mind, it was an entire field of daisies. I don’t know if they were always there, or if they just sprung up one year, but I loved them. I was a dreamy child, raised on Neverland, Narnia, and the Hundred Acre Woods, I was always looking for a place of my own. A place where magic might happen, or at least, I might be special. Sometimes it was a yellow shelf in my walk-in closet that I was just small enough to sit underneath and read. Sometimes it was a puddle in the yard at school that lasted for weeks after a rain. It was a deep puddle with rocks and grass trapped underneath. A friend and I convinced ourselves that the bobby pins we stole from our mothers were actually magic keys to the kingdom trapped underneath. For a whole school year, every time it rained we rushed to the field at recess to try and enter.

There were also wild strawberries in our yard and I would pick the strawberries and the honeysuckle and sit on the jungle gym looking into the wild daisies, creating worlds in my mind.

My father was an inconsistent gardener. He claimed that his parents, immigrants who had been wealthy in the old country, disapproved of anything hinting at manual labor for their sons. Gardening was an act of rebellion for him, but not something he knew a lot about, or stuck to. Some years, he planted vegetables and flowers, some years, he barely mowed the lawn. One year, after we had seen formal gardens on a trip, he promised me that he would help me plant my own hedge maze. And one year, not knowing about the fantasy world I had created in the wild daisy patch, he mowed them down.

I cried when I saw the patch of grass where my daisies had been. When my father learned how upset I was, he promised to replant them. He bought seeds of some sort, but the daisies never came back. For years, this was where the story ended.

The other day, on a family Father’s Day hike my daughter and I saw wild daisies in a field. I told my daughter that I loved wild daisies and she told me that daisies are her favorite flower. I told her the story about the patch of wild daisies in my childhood backyard. Telling her the story, I could taste the tiny, gritty, strawberries and the honeysuckle. I could smell the dogwood trees.

My father is not well. He is not 100% himself these days. But when I told my daughter the story of the wild daisies I could see him as well. I could see his collection of inconsistent hobbies, the way he threw himself into things like woodworking and gardening, never quite mastering them. I could hear his lectures on subjects he knew and didn’t know. I could hear the way he swore when upset, and see the smirk he gave when amused. I could see his love in the fact that after mowing down some weeds, he tried to replant them just to make me happy. The important thing isn’t that my father mowed down the daisies, it’s that he tried to replant them.

For years, somewhere in the back of my mind, I have regretted the loss of the wild daisies. But the other day, I realized that if the daisies hadn’t been lost, I wouldn’t have found them again decades later, in a different place. Not everything that is lost can be found, but not everything that is lost is truly lost either.