Mama Had a Baby

I posted this photo of my daughter on our family website last week, and my mother-in-law responded saying, among other things, "...I have always loved dandelions and thought they got a bum rap from society at large...."

I couldn't agree more. I love dandelions; the little bright spots of color popping out of the grass. Cheery little bits of sunshine. Explosions of summer on the lawn.

I know master gardeners and lawn aficionados do not join me in the applause for the happy little flower. I understand that in the book of great gardens, a dandelion has no place. I get that it's a weed. But darn it, it's the prettiest little weed on the planet.
As a matter of fact, if you had told me that dandelions were weeds when I was a young'un, I would never, could never have believed you. I used to spend hours in the fields near home picking gobs of dandelions and then sitting in the grass with a lapful of flowers while I patiently, methodically weaved stems together to create perfect dandelion crowns. Adorning my head in the decadent yellow actually made me feel like a princess. I loved it immensely.

In the late spring months in Salt Lake City, Utah when the dandelions were out in full force my friends and I used to make dandelion jewelry during our recess breaks at school. Given the decade, our youth, and the State I grew up in, we knew little of piercing anything other than ears so our jewelry weaving was limited to decorating heads, arms and ankles. To my knowledge no one among us ever tried to thrust a dandelion stem through a nose or a tongue. There may well have been a belly button decoration once or twice, after all we were a generation raised on I Dream of Jeannie. Once fully bejeweled we entered the world of our imaginative play. The group of us had concocted an elaborate game about ANCIENT ISLANDERS who WORSHIPPED the ancient gods. One of us, usually me, would be the goddess and the others would assume the role of humble goddess worshipper. The being of greatness would sit on a rock or a tree stump looking down on the humans and they in turn would prostrate themselves on the ground, gyrating in undulating motion, arms waving and chant "O Holy MOON-SUN god". But to be totally honest about it we were all a little nervous about the sin attached to using the name G-O-D and thus opted for the wholly benign "O Holy MOON-SUN Gosh" instead. This satisfied all players that the ancient goddess would understand the substitution and we would avoid offending the big guy upstairs or more likely the eavesdropping third graders who were bound to report us.

We played other games too. My older brothers taught me the tortuous rhyme "my mama had a baby and it's head popped off" which we would chant after picking up dandelions and upon the "head popped off" line would place a thumb just under the base of the flower and with applied force flick the top of the dandelion from the stem. The flower would fly up with a satisfying force before succumbing to the gravitational pull of the earth and land with a thud at our feet. My mother ALWAYS protested this game. I didn't get that at the time, but it comes to me clearly now just how morose and macabre the silly play was. I have never passed on the tradition to my kids. I wonder if my brothers have to theirs?
The greatest joy of course was finding a wishing flower; the dandelion gone to seed and forming a perfect sphere of fluffy whiteness. Tenderly I would pluck this treasure from the ground, being very careful not to upset a single seed and send it flying before its time. I then would close my eyes, squeezing them tightly, and WISH. I can't tell you what I wished for, because if you tell a wish it doesn't come true. But I wished for some glorious things every chance I got. Wishing complete, I would open my eyes and BLOW; the tiny seeds released from the center post gracefully floating, swirling, sweeping through the air. Off and on the way to retrieve the secret desires I had placed among them. Oh, how I loved to watch these gatherers of my hopes dancing away.

To this day I remain a big fan of the dandelion. I suppose it would still be a difficult sell to convince me that they are anything other than brilliant spots of inspiration and sweet memories. And while I am on this point, I should mention that I take my hat off to the resilience of the wonder weed. More often than not, I see the plants making their way up through the cracks in a sidewalk or a bursting out of a brick fence. To flourish like that under difficult circumstances is something that absolutely commands respect.

Truly, something to aspire to.