Walking down the street Norman admired all the fine lawns, all a deep forest green, absolutely perfect: level, newly mown, cut precisely three inches high, trimmed at the edges, each blade in its place. One block, two blocks, three blocks—all the lawns absolutely perfect. Then in the middle of the fourth block, in the very middle of the lawn—a lone dandelion raised its yellow head above the green. None of the adjacent lawns had any similar flowers. It was the product of a single seed that had been borne on the wind, maybe from across town, maybe from another town altogether.
Neighbors began to gather on the sidewalk, staring in awe at the one splash of yellow in a sea of green.
“What do you think it means?” asked one of the group.
“I dunno. Perhaps it’s declaring allegiance to the sun.”
“Maybe it’s lost. There aren’t any others”
“Maybe. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
They were neighbors, yet almost never before said much more than “Hello” to one another, but as they gathered to admire the flower, conversation began to flow. One learned that his fellow across the street enjoyed model trains and had one in his basement. Another learned a neighbor still held a high school track record after twenty years. Yet another made his living selling antiques.
Leather shod feet stepped slowly and carefully toward the curious bloom in an attempt to satisfy their curiosity. One of the group reached out tentatively, touching the bright yellow head.
“It feels different than the grass—softer—and the stem is round, not like grass.”
They stood around the small bloom for hours as the sun went down. As the light faded, they dispersed. The sun came up again, went down, and came up again several times more as they went about our lives. They a formed a committee to study the phenomenon. They pondered the meaning of the small yellow flower, wondering if it was an offspring of the sun, since every morning that’s where it turned its face. Perhaps it was a message of some kind. Was an alien species trying to communicate with them? Were there more of them somewhere? What were they trying to tell them?
A neighbor erected a small fence to enclose and protect the small flower. Someday they hoped to understand its significance. They spoke to it, but it gave no answer. It stood mute and soaked up the sun, seemingly happy to do nothing else.
Then . . .a second flower appeared, just like the first . . . and a third.
“It’s multiplying!” a neighbor shouted. Cheers of glee rang out through the neighborhood as they danced around the tiny wonders.
After two weeks the yellow faded and morphed into a little ball of delicate lace. Then the breeze began to flutter across the lawn, scattering pieces of the lace into the sky. They rose out of sight, journeying to some other place where they would inspire wonder.
They drifted for days, following updrafts and downdrafts until the winds began to calm, then they slowly drifted down on lace parachutes. Down, down, down, until they reached the earth in a parkland. A wooly animal barked as some of them came down into its fur, then it trotted off to deposit them in a flower bed near the center of the park. Two weeks later a small yellow flower proudly raised its head among the daffodils and tulips in the bed. The yellow flower looked out on the green parkland and saw its brethren gathering at the base of a tree. He wished he could join them but there was too much distance and his roots were fixed in the soil. Nevertheless, he watched as they waved to him when the breeze blew.
One morning, two men carrying a canister with a hose attached stopped near the clump of yellow brethren and scowled. There was none of the awe and delight that was shown by the neighborhood they had drifted in from weeks ago. No one danced in a circle around them. No one wrote odes to their sunny attitudes.
One of the two men grabbed the handle of the canister they carried and pumped for a few moments, then squirted the brethren with some liquid. The men noticed the small sunburst in the flowerbed, but agreed they would have to come back later and dig it out to avoid damaging the other flowers.
The memories of men are, however, unreliable and for the moment the lone golden sunburst in the flower bed was forgotten. It was left to bloom and ripen among the tulips and daffodils. From its vantage point in the flower bed, it watched its brethren by the tree begin to sicken and sag. They drooped lower and lower, turning brown, until their heads reached the ground. The head of the flower among the tulips bowed its own head in sadness. The rains came, masking the tears of the lone splash of yellow in the flowerbed.
Buoyed by the rains, when the sun came out, the yellow flower recovered and rose tall once more, taking in the sunshine until it, too began to morph into a ball of lace. Swaying in the breeze, the lace began to scatter into the sky, following the updrafts and the downdrafts for days
until the small fragments of lace blew over a meadow. There they scattered widely, growing tall and calling out to one another across the meadow in their own language, caring for one another, offering encouragement.
Every Wednesday, a young girl would come to the meadow, lay her blanket down among them, eat her lunch and then sit on the blanket and stare at what most people would call weeds. Each one had a different personality and they would free her imagination, as she made up stories about them attending dances and falling in love. Sometimes a villain would make his appearance in the story, trying to drive wedges between the lovers. There would be a sword fight, but in the end, love always prevailed.
The yellow flowers multiplied into a vast blanket. In time, each flower morphed into a ball of lace, pieces of which were scattered on the wind. The lacy fragments filled the sky as the young girl watched them. Each of them gave her a new idea for a story. She gathered the ideas into her head, and spun them into yarn. Each piece of yarn connected one lacy bit to another in a never ending treasury of endlessly changing patterns. As a result she never ran out of tales.
