Summer always has always been my favorite season. It was one of the first truly hot days of the year, and I was four years old. My dad came home from work and put on a horrible 80's t-shirt (it was too big) and basketball shorts (I always thought they were too small.) He took all of us kids out to the neighboring field to run around and be merry. My shoes stayed nestled into the various places I "kept" them - you know, under my bed, under my mom's bed, in the yard, wherever I wanted really.
We raced to the field - "GUYS! Don't run ahead of me!" (Dad's were always such fun-ruiners when it came to crossing streets) - and once there I remember seeing a cloak of dandelions. The field that stretched as far as my eye could see had been transformed into a yellow blanket of all things that are good and honorable. A blanket of dandelions. I couldn't count them all! And I certainly couldn't pick them all and put them in a vase (or plastic cup) and give them to my mom as a present!
It was as gorgeous and breath-taking a scene as that little four year old could have imagined.
I ran barefooted and lighthearted through the field and picked flowers, and squished them in my dirty little fingers. I rolled down the hill and stained my cute dress with awful weed yellow and lawn green. The dandelions made me so happy.
Dandelions don't really have that effect on me anymore. I wish they did. In fact, I don't think I have thought about dandelions in...well, it must be years! I never think about dandelions and their happiness. But today I was baby-sitting a little girl and we went for a walk. I was pushing her on her bike and she gasped. She slammed her chubby ankles into the pedals to stop the bike. She evacuated the bike. Away she went, running down the sidewalk, where she stopped at one lone dandelion.
I ran barefooted and lighthearted through the field and picked flowers, and squished them in my dirty little fingers. I rolled down the hill and stained my cute dress with awful weed yellow and lawn green. The dandelions made me so happy.
In one careful but deadly swoop she ripped the weed out of the ground and took it's flowery head to her bike basket - grinning like a goober. "Dees are my fwowers. See? Dees dees are my fwowers." She dropped the new dandelion in with the wilting old dandelions. You would have thought she had diamonds in that pink basket. Oh my the girl was so happy!
