Winged Parachutes

  

1970s

I loved childhood summers in North Carolina.  With no cell phones in existence then, and with no television in our rental places at Lake Junaluska, my sister and I spent our two weeks of cooler weather outdoors, reading, imagining, creating, building, and playing.  The soft grass, the smell of clover, the small creeks with smooth rocks, and the fireflies were so different from our norm.  We reveled in the joy of those days.

 We took over a small rock foundation that became a fort, and we protected each other from the marauding pirates.  We skipped and sang as the famous Lewis Sisters.  We owned a restaurant, making menus and serving food and charging customers with tabs we wrote up.  We worked as civil engineers, moving rocks and twigs that blocked the flow of creek water.  We filled mason jars with the tiny lights of fireflies dancing inside the glass.

My first remembered experience with dandelions came in one of those early summers.  What joy!  Pulling the puffed stem from the ground, I gripped it carefully, wrapping all my small fingers around the green furry stem.  I held the puff in front of my lips, careful not to move it too much too soon.   I took a birthday-candle-blowing-out breath and blew.  

It was pure magic.  Those small white seeds rode the wind currents and parachuted down across the lawn, releasing their passengers.  I would pick another puff, make a wish, and blow again, confident that there were no bounds to the magic of nature and the magic of life.


Early 2000s

I watched my two little boys in the yard at Mom and Dad’s place in North Carolina.  Born in a different decade, and born with technology that I couldn’t have dreamed of 30 years earlier, they were quite a bit less sure of what to do with their time without a DVD on or a GameBoy in hand.  

They watched with fascination at the chipmunks (otherwise known as “chinkminks”) who  scuttled across the yard, diving in small holes at the base of the hickory tree.  They marveled at the different grass, the sound of the wind coming down the hills through the leaves of the many trees.  When their cousins appeared, the art of “cousining” resumed after a 12-month hiatus.  With 4 boys under the age of 6, the raucous laughter and crashing of cars and the sound of tussling and wrestling filled the air.

The four boys chased bugs, walked in the creeks, got muddy and wet, and made forts in the house.  They ate everything in sight, from Grandma’s famous pickles to her never-ending batches of sweets.  They, too, became civil engineers, building huge dams, and then became expert rock throwers in the same exact spot their mothers had 30 years before.

I held my breath as they climbed the tree in front of the house, certain that I would hear the thunk of bones on the ground.  Running from dandelion to dandelion, they blew the puffs across the yard, with me cringing each time, loving their laughter but also realizing dandelion weeds would be spread all over the yard.  



October 2020

I held the all-too-familiar hand, the wrinkles a new development I refused to accept.  It was the hand that had weeded gardens, the hand that had written notes and Christmas letters to each of her dear friends, the hand that graded thousands of English assignments, the hand that had spanked me occasionally and nurtured me throughout the years.  It was the hand that held the phone I called each day for almost 30 years since Dad died.  She was dying.  I could do nothing to save her.  My “She-ro,” who was not afraid to climb on roofs and trim trees, who quietly battled anxiety and depression without ever admitting it to herself or anyone else, who was a literal force of nature, couldn’t fight this.

Sitting beside her bed, hearing her take each deep heavy breath, the unreality of the impact of chemo on my mom’s lungs, the unreality of her imminent last breath, and the unreality of being without either parent at the age of 51—-all these unrealities left me numb.  Instead, I sat and held her hand and wrote an obituary she would have laughed about and loved.

Her last gift to me was a light long-sleeved cardigan with the words on the back, “Just Breathe.”  Beside the words was a picture of a dandelion, with seeds parachuting away.  At first, I had misinterpreted and believed it a message to me to stop being anxious.  Perhaps it was.  

However, since she, too, carried the same anxiety, beside that hospital bed in her last moments, I began to think that perhaps she was wanting me to slip back to my younger years, to rediscover the magic of childhood, to dream that the seeds I was planting in the lives of my boys and my other relationships would come true.  

It was a message to believe again.  To believe in me.  To believe in the magic of life.  To grab hold of the furry green stem with bigger fingers and close my eyes and make a wish.  To pucker up my lips and say to the world, “Here’s to bigger dreams, to larger possibilities, to a me that is true to myself.”


November 2020 and after . . . .

When I returned from my mom’s funeral, I suddenly saw dandelions in numerous places in my yard, the puffs just ready for me to blow on.  It was November, and before I even unpacked the car, this 51-year-old woman blew and watched the seeds dance around on the wind.

Now, each time I see a dandelion, including ten days ago, at the age of 54, I breathe and I believe.