I almost stepped on them.
Exiting my truck, having parked at the curb, I gathered up my computer, checked again to be sure my keys were in my pocket, I locked up and turned to head toward the coffee shop across the street.
But right there, at my feet, in the grass median between the street and sidewalk, were two dandelions, their stalks intertwined as if they were in love.
Slowly, gingerly – given my age anymore dictates my movements – I knelt down beside them until the three of us were face to face.
Their blossoms extended toward the bright blue yonder of wispy white clouds, as lovers might as they looked together into the future of a bright new day.
Members of the daisy family, these beautiful once- young, and once-yellow, flowers had, with age, become round balls of silver tufted hair.
Sipping my cup of coffee a short time later, I smiled as the same sunlight that had highlighted my little flower friends reflected back to me from the computer screen my own silver tufts of hair. Smile lines crinkled at the corners of my eyes and mouth even as the many delicate mini stalks that framed the face of my little cousins of the daisies.
Tradition suggests that if one blows a dandelion’s seeds with one breath, a wish will be granted.
I didn’t dare pick these two, partly in the hope that some other passerby like me would discover what I had, but also, I left them alone, together, their stalks intertwined, because my wish – my prayer – had already been granted.
I had found that one, that someone, and not just anyone. Not so much a companion as a soul mate. Not just someone to be with but someone who wished, and prayed, and who then believed, that their dream, like my dream, had come true.
Someone at the same stage of life like me, with her own pappus-like, greying-white, often-unruly-silvered hair of her own, whose delicate smile lines crinkled at the corners, her smile reflected back at my own.
My wish, my prayer, and hers, had come true.
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