Mothers’ Day

It’s Mothers’ Day. A day full of emotion, depending on one’s relationship with one’s mother or motherhood in general and with some added challenges this year. It is also a day strongly associated with flowers – roses and tulips and lilies and beautiful bouquets or hanging baskets. But I’d like to propose that instead of those, the flower of Mothers’ Day should be (drumroll please): the dandelion.

Yes, the dandelion. The weed, the scourge of those who care about their lawns, one of the most common and easily found flower. But the dandelion is more than that, particularly when combined with mothers and small children. For the dandelion bouquet is likely the first gift of flowers a mother will receive from her child. It is a gift full of love, purity, and innocence, given for no other reason than a child seeing something pretty and wanting to share it with their mom. It’s full of pride from the child at being able to do something for their mom all by themselves. They found the flowers, they picked them, and they brought them to mom without any help. They didn’t need money, they didn’t need someone to drive them somewhere, they didn’t need someone to help them reach or carry or anything else. That raggedy bouquet of bright yellow is all them.

The dandelions in our yard have traded their yellow for the misty white seed head, and it is a treat to photograph. Yesterday, I spent a great deal of time try to catch seeds flying away, which was not as successful as I hoped, but a fun experiment anyway.

As I went back and looked through the photos I got, I started thinking again of the connections between dandelions and Mothers’ Day. While looking at the globe of seeds, I thought of a family, living together and nurturing one another.

Winds may blow and storms may batter, but they hold on to one another.

But as time goes on, children grow and venture out on their own. Those teenage years in particular are represented by the competing desires to leave and to stay.

Eventually, one by one they take their leave, and go wherever the wind may take them. And despite the physical emptiness that is left behind, there is joy in the knowledge that they are starting their own journey, putting down their own roots, and beginning the cycle once more.

So here’s to the mothers, fathers, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents, friends, teachers, and mentors who nourish and sustain us until we are ready to walk our own paths and support us from afar after we go. And here’s to the dandelions, who can symbolize those relationships if we let them.