The Overlooked

"Be faithful in small things because it is in them that your strength lies." (Mother Teresa)

It was a big, fat juicy thing, the lone dandelion lucky enough to survive the last visit of our landscaping crew, and for a good long while this morning it was all that mattered. Duncan and I strolled down to the Glen this morning, a place we pass through numerous times a day but haven't spent much time enjoying lately. Rather than make our usual rounds we decided to simply lay on the hill on our bellies and watch the shadows move through the cool mat of grass, delight in the paths of the ants as they struggled up one blade, down the other side only to stumble across a stick, bigger in their world than a fallen tree in ours. I wanted to pluck it as my grandmother taught me, and wipe its lustrous head across my nose until it turned yellow with its buttered powder, but I refrained. It was gorgeous and enormous, a whole world unto itself with its bright petals and curling stamens, and even though it is considered a weed I found it no less magical than the tips of the blossoms in the trees, which are inexplicably far more revered.

 

And so while Duncan licked the sticky seedlings from his feet I watched a dandelion be a dandelion and the blossoms be blossoms and reminded myself once again that there is beauty in everything, especially in those things most easily overlooked.