counting

he picks them with a zeal bordering on obsession, with a “wow-oo” of admiration for those most ripe, most worthy. those that come free of the ground with long stems he deems “biii-iiig”…those whose heads he pulls off, still unsure of the physics of this whole plucking art, are “babies.” he gives me the babies, sweetly, reserving the more impressive long ones for his own esoteric collections, scattered through the backyard like random floral shrines, Victorian and faintly eerie. and then he is off again, careening full-tilt on short, sturdy legs across our expanse of yellow-dotted lawn, hunting.

he has been so thorough we are beginning to run out of dandeliion cover. he’s better than a goat. we could rent him out to landscaping companies.

tonight the light was golden before bedtime and we found our first ghost dandelion of the season, wispy and white. i taught him how to blow. he inhaled most of it, but we laughed and tickled our noses with the remnants and dropped the stem into the mulch.  he looked back then, picked up the stem with its clinging half-cloud still intact, and picked another yellow bloom and introduced the two, touching their heads together, intoning words i do not understand.

and soon they will be gone, all these yellow weeds my son finds so beautiful, so magical…blowin’ in the wind, seed for another year.

and i look at him and his solid little body suddenly seems so fragile, ephemeral…this childhood so impossibly short.