Big Wish

Isn't this the biggest dandelion ever? I should have put something in the picture for scale, but you can believe it was between the size of a baseball and a softball.

A dandelion of that size is something remarkable. They are so fragile and temperamental. Especially in a city park, a rambunctious child or a puff of wind easily could have shattered this globe of petals.

It's been a long time since I've wished on a dandelion. When I see them now, in my adult life, I usually kick them mostly to help them disseminate their offspring, but I also enjoy seeing the tiny white flowers dance on the wind like upside-down ballerinas pirouetting across the grass.

But a dandelion this big? The wish was certain to come true! So I thought about it, but nothing came to mind. And I specifically remember coming out of my hopeful thinking—There's no such thing as wishes.

I was dried up. My mind was too realistic to actually believe in wishes. I would simply be obliterating a tiny miracle of nature just because superstition required it of me. So I walked away, leaving behind potentially limitless wealth or undying happiness because I was too afraid to bend over, make a wish, and help a weed reproduce. I just didn't want to get my hopes up for a wish that I knew would never come true. I didn't want to experience that tiny moment of disappointment when I would realize the dandelion failed.

Every birthday wish, every shooting star, every penny into a fountain, eyelash on a cheek, or dandelion in the park is essentially one tiny instant of disappointment. Our wishes never come true: that's why they're wishes. They're parts of our lives beyond our reach. Being a child must be amazing. A child still has the innocent strength of mind to believe that good things can happen simply by throwing coins into water or blowing on a weed.

I wonder what age we all stopped believing, I mean really believing, in wishes. Some people still make birthday wishes into their old age, but that's more desperation than actual belief.

I went back out to the same park later, and I saw the stump plucked of its wonderful aberration. Someone saw the same dandelion and had made a wish. I wonder what they wished for.

I wish I had that kind of simple confidence in wishes and dandelions—that I might pluck a flower and blow without turning it into a pontification on happiness, dreams, or the fear of not getting either one. I wish that I could still believe in wishes.