Dandelions on 43rd Street - by Nan Brooks

 

My thanks to consortium member Oldgirl for inspiration to revisit my childhood home.

In these days of the lethal virus and multitudinous threats to our country, I am reminded that it is often an act of loving kindness that helps us survive. Here is one from 1945.

We moved into the tiny half double on 43^rd street just after my brother John was born, so I would have been almost three years old. I was afraid of everything: dogs, noise, loud voices, large spaces, crowds, and more.  After a traumatic infancy during which I “died” in surgery three times and nearly died from failure to digest food, the world overwhelmed me.

My mother had lifted the borrowed buggy and sleeping baby Johnny down off the tiny porch and turned to me, waiting so that we can set out on our walk.  I, however, refuse to move from the porch where I sit cowering against the wall. The concrete is cold under my dress and cotton panties. My mother insists, becoming angrier by the minute, but I refuse to move. Her anger is terrifying and I know better than to disobey, but I cannot move. I cannot speak, cannot tell her what is wrong.

She is standing in the middle grassy strip of the old driveway beside the house. There are two strips of concrete with a grass-filled strip between them. The strip of green is full of dandelions gone to seed and somehow my mother realizes that the dandelion fuzz floating on the breeze is what I fear. I can still see her, those 75 years ago, sitting in her cotton print housedress, her dark hair to her shoulders, brows furrowed in worry about me, her mysterious fear ridden daughter. She smiles suddenly and says, “Did you know that if make a wish and then you blow all the fuzz off the dandelion, your wish will come true? Watch!”

She picks a dandelion and blows against the fuzzy blossom, watching the seeds with their miniscule wings float away. She says, “Oooooh, it’s magic!”  I watch, still silent but fascinated. Again and again she plucks a dandelion, blows off the seeds.  “What should I wish for?” she asks. I cannot answer, but I scoot across the cold concrete to the top step, my feet dangling toward the next step down. As she continues to blow dandelion seeds, she makes sure not to watch as I creep down the steps toward her and the dreaded grey fuzz.

Eventually I am beside her in the grass, tears drying on my face, as she hands me a blossom. “Make a wish, Honey,” she says, and “go whoooooo!”  So I do just that.

In due time, we scramble up out of the dandelion patch and talk our walk, wishes made. I learn in that moment what I will learn again and again in this life:

Loving kindness makes all the difference.