Dandelion Wishes

“Spring’s comin.”

She still never knew how Caroline could tell. Caroline was blind and wasn’t one for clocks, calendars or seasons. She rarely moved from her rocking chair by the open front window and hated going outside, but she always knew when spring was coming. 

“Yes, Caroline. Three more days and spring’ll be here. Maybe this year we can go outside and smell all of the beautiful flowers.” It was more of a statement than a question.

Caroline just grunted in reply. 

She knew Caroline wouldn’t go outside this year to smell the flowers. It would just be like all the other years before. Instead of taking a stroll through the hills, Caroline would spend the entire season sitting by the window by the front door, never saying more than three words at a time, offering a grunt here and there.

It was a beautiful day, so she left Caroline alone in her chair to think or wonder or do whatever it is Caroline does to take a walk outside. 

***

The land was coming alive again. She knew baby blossoms of all sorts would be peeking through on the trees branches and from the grass on the ground. Pretty soon the entire land would be in full bloom displaying its glorious beauty to anyone who wanted to see. The bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes would be out soon with their colors so beautiful it would be like a painting. One day the flowers would just be barely poking out of the grass, like shy children hiding behind their mother’s hoop skirt, and the next day they would blanket the hills forgetting there was ever a reason to be afraid.

She closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh, almost Spring, air and let her mind transport her back to another time. 

She remembered the feel of the grass in her toes, the daisies in the field, the low hum of dragonflies, peach trees blossoming, the smell of buttercups, and the painful scrapes (and subsequent rash) from some mean bull nettles.

She remembered a few run-ins with some copperheads, one rattlesnake, and some harmless (she found out later) garden snakes. She learned the lesson early on that if she was going to run around outside and explore the land instead of “acting like a little lady,” she would have to protect herself. A tough lesson to learn and to this very day she hated snakes, and she hated her directress for not rescuing her from them. But she learned the rules, “red and yellow, kill a fellow; red and black, friend of jack” so she could keep going outside and avoid the scary ones.

But most of all she remembered making wishes as she blew dandelion seeds. 

She loved finding as many dandelions as she could. Seeking out the fluffy whites among the sea of blues and reds and yellows. Picking them was a delicate task as if she were trying to collect stars from the sky. Something precious and celestial. If she picked too hard, some seeds would shake loose and blow away before she could make her wishes.  She needed as many seeds as possible for her wishes, so she always gave the task her full attention to make sure she wasn’t wasting any potential wishes. 

Making wishes on dandelions was a science. For your wish to come true, you had to be sure to blow the dandelion with the breeze so the dandelion seeds would fly and not just stick on you. And you had to be sure to blow them all off in one breath or your wish wouldn’t come true. At least that’s what everybody always said. 

She didn’t wish for a new dress or a new pair of shoes for Sunday School like the other girls. She didn’t wish for a dime to take to get some licorice candy like the school kids. She could have wished for anything in the world, but all she ever wished for was that the someone would love her. She never knew what that had truly felt like...to be loved.

To make sure her wish came true, she always willed herself to blow out all the seeds in one breath. It was hard at first, but as she got older, she found it to be a lot easier, and she just knew that she would have a better chance at her wish coming true. When she was younger, after each blow and wish, she would chase the white seeds that were transported into the air to see where they fell because she knew there would be new dandelions in that place the next spring.

Year after year, she made that same wish, or a variant of that wish, over and over. But her wish never seemed to come true. One year she wished so much, she couldn’t find any more dandelions for a whole two weeks. As she got older, and her wish still hadn’t come true, she felt it was best to let the seeds just carry where they may, instead of her chasing them. She thought she might be blocking the wish because she could see where the seeds fell. She wanted her wishes to fly out of sight, and maybe the seeds would work better. But whatever she tried; it didn’t work. One day she just realized that she would never be loved.

The next spring, she just didn’t go outside at all. She just sat in her room and looked out the window. And she didn’t go outside the spring after that or the spring after that or the spring after that. Until one day, she just stopped going outside altogether.

She opened her eyes because she heard the front door open. “Spring’s comin,” she told her nurse. 

“Yes, Caroline. Three more days and spring’ll be here. Maybe this year we can go outside and smell all of the beautiful flowers.”

But Caroline wouldn’t go outside this year or any other year because she could still see the beautiful flowers, remember the feel of grass in her toes, remember the low hum of the dragonflies, and peach trees blossoming, smell the buttercups, and remember the painful scrapes of bull nettles. Bust most of all Caroline still remembered making dandelion wishes that never came true.