Miss Esther Earl (1994-2010) dreamed up this wonderful holiday, and she left it as a legacy for us who are still here forging along. August 3 is an invitation every year to say “I love you,” to family and friends and people in our lives, especially if we’ve never said it to them before, and especially if saying it seems like going out on a limb in a vulnerable new way.

How did Esther Day become famous? That’s the work of John Green, author of Everything is Tuberculosis. Esther was an online follower of his, and John learned about Esther and the Earl family organization This Star Won’t Go Out, benefiting families of children with cancer. John offered to make Esther’s birthday on August 3 become any kind of holiday that Esther would like, in her memory and honor. Esther decided to make her day an annual occasion to reach out in love to all the people who are not our special valentine, or who are not anybody’s valentine at all.

Here is a picture from today’s walk, a happy free-for-all of cosmo flowers in pink and in white, colored like Good & Plenty candies.

Cosmo flowers remind me of a cherished friend of mine from years ago. She was kind and brilliant and funny and beautiful, and she loved to cook up feasts for all us neighbors. She was finishing her PhD dissertation, and also bought herself an old farmhouse and restored it from forlorn to a treasure box. She moved into her home and planted the yard with all kinds of flowers. Then she started to tire easily, with little dizzy fainting spells. The doctors told her to quit working so hard.

One lovely August day she and I sat in her parlor with its polished old wood floors and beveled glass window seat with a whole riot of cosmos crowding up against the panes in the sunshine. There she told me that somebody at the local hospital had just totalled up her symptoms and imaging scans and prognosis, figured out what-all was going on, and referred her to a facility with hospice care. I said “I love you, and I’ll do anything to help care for you.” She said “I love you too. Don’t ever come back. I can’t die if you’re with me.” She meant it. In her care facility she ordered her relatives to offer no updates about her condition, until an envelope showed up at my post office box one day with an obituary inside, cut out of the local paper.

So today on this lovely August afternoon, admiring this little house garden made me think all about her. Then I remembered: it’s just in time for Esther Day.

Happy Birthday on your own star, Esther! Thank you, John.