Stopping to Smell the… Dandelions?
“Mommmmmmyyyyy! WAIT!” my 3 year old daughter’s voice rang from the hall as she raced into the laundry room, snatching her jeans out of my hands and reaching deep into the pocket she pulled out two smashed, tattered dandelions which now more resembled compost than flowers. Their brown-yellow color brightened though when she shoved them up at me with a wide grin. “These are for you.”
Standing jeans and dandelions in hand I thought back to just a few hours earlier, the familiar mommy guilt that seems to plague the best of us these days washing over me. We had been 15 minutes late as it was, finally getting out of the house for an appointment. I had ushered her out onto the porch pulling the front door shut I stepped around her making my way, little sister and diaper bag in hand, to the car.
I had hollered back at her “Hurry up, we’re late.” And with all her preschool might she had wanted to obey, I am sure of that, but you see an ant, tiny and black, had crossed her path on the short walk from house to driveway and curiosity had gotten the best of her. She dropped to her knees crawling behind the ant examining him with great interest, at this point I imagine the ant was running for all he was worth for the sheltered safety of the nearby grass fearing death by chubby preschool finger. As his luck would have it though, with just centimeters to spare, a butterfly had caught her attention sending her scrambling to her feet and running around the house to the back yard jumping, diving, and swooping all the way in her best attempts to catch the poor unsuspecting creature.
Luck would once again intervene on the behalf of the insects that call our yard home, greeted by a generous lick to the face and a paw planted lovingly and oh-so squarely in the middle of her white shirt her attention would turn to the family mutt, Toby, who just happens to be her favorite sand box buddy in the world. She had once told me that no one can dig better holes than Toby. At the time my flower beds had experienced his expertise that very day which lead to the sarcastic “uh, huh.” That she received as a response. Apparently recognition was all she was out for in her informative conversation so it had luckily done the trick without my having to delve into the unfortunate things that would happen to our beloved Toby if he chose to use mommy’s flower beds as his digging grounds again. With their history I can be almost 100% sure that they headed straight for the sand box.
How they ended up in the middle of a patch of bright yellow dandelions, my daughter kneeling picking as many as she could reach, Toby watching contentedly probably plotting the angle in which he was about to pounce to ensure the entirety of the bouquet she had collected would end up in his mouth, remains a mystery but this is where I found her.
Exasperated, I had yelled at her, “I said to get into the car! We’re late! What are you doing?” I remembered seeing her stuff the flowers into her pocket as she ran towards me, but had been so preoccupied with the now filthy clothes that I had just dressed her in an hour before the memory was vague and at the time had probably been over run with my anger at the state I had found her in. Didn’t she know we had to be at the doctor’s office now?
It had taken the slimy brown flowers and that big grin, hours later to make me realize, she did. She knew we had to be at the doctor’s office. She knew we were late. And she knew something that I didn’t. She knew that stopping to smell the dandelions was more important than anything our day had in store. Even if it only lasted the 2 minutes it had taken me to buckle her little sister into the car who, thank goodness, has no interest in ants - yet!
