Happy Sunday morning! So here is a little story within a story. The other day, my granddaughter, Celia, sixteen months old, toddled over and handed me a dandelion. She just completely melted my heart and reminded me of a long ago story I had written about my daughter and dandelions.  I came home and looked up the story and it was written twenty years ago- which will become significant when you read it.  Sometimes, life is just impossibly sweet.

Collecting Dandelions, Collecting Memories

It is spring. I’m not sure why, but this year, I am more keenly aware of the changes around me. Every day, I see something new blooming in the yard or another tiny green sprout that the sun has coaxed out of the ground. The redbuds in our yard are brilliant. The phlox and bluebells, dogwood and lilac bushes are all heavenly in their beauty.

But my favorite are the dandelions. Yes, dandelions. They spot our yard like freckles on a young girl’s face. I would never think of getting rid of them because dandelions are the picking flowers. You see, I have three daughters, and there is just something about young children and flower picking.

My two oldest daughters are way beyond that. At fourteen and eleven, their hands are busy applying fingernail polish, practicing the piano, and dribbling basketballs. But not Grace. She’s three, a magical age- she IS springtime.

On a beautiful sunny day, she floats down the front steps in her favorite dress, the wind blowing her hair. She dances and skips through the yard as if she were called by some mysterious music that I long ago stopped hearing. She spots a robin pecking for a worm. Quietly, she stalks him, ever hopeful that she will catch him this time. Of course, he startles and flies away long before she can get near him. But she is not too disappointed because suddenly she has caught a whiff of the lilac bush and quickly sticks her nose among the blooms.

She crouches down to observe something on the ground a little more closely. I get back to my reading on the porch, content that my child is happily entertaining herself. A few minutes later, I look up to see her on the steps, holding her hand behind her back.

“I have a surprise for you,” she says in a sing-song voice. I put my book down and meet her at the top of the steps.
“What is it?” I ask, mocking anticipation.
“Close your eyes,” she insists.

I close my eyes momentarily and when I open them, I do have a big surprise. There in front of me is the face of an angel, looking up at me with eyes so full of love and pride that I can feel the breath go out of me. In her tight fist is a clump of already wilting dandelions.

“Oh, Grace,” I say, “They are so beautiful. Thank you.” And I really mean that. They are the most beautiful thing I can imagine right now, a gift of love from a three-year-old child. My mind wanders back to two other small girls who gave me similar gifts of love, and I wonder where the time has gone. I wish that I could keep this moment forever. If only I could just pluck it out of time and press it in a book so that I could pull it back out in twenty years and feel it again, complete. But I know now that I can’t do that. So I lean down and give her a warm hug and kiss, and we walk into our house together, in search of the perfect vase.

By Maria Brady-Smith