Jenny plucked the dandelions from the lawn. I didn’t want to say I preferred to dig them up to get the roots. So much of life is about realizing what matters, and letting go. I patted her legs, where they lay across the quilt, and remembered she couldn’t feel that. Instead I flopped down next to her so we were both lying side by side, facing the grass. From here the dandelions looked like a little yellow forest.
She plucked one that had gone to seed and looked at me. “I will make a wish. But don’t read my mind like you always do!” She laughed. “I really want this one to come true.” She took a deep breath and blew on the puffball of white. It exploded, like a hundred tiny paratroopers jumping from a little plane all at once, and floating down.
I picked up a fuzzy-headed dandelion too, wincing at the thought of all the seeds we were planting. It just meant more to deal with next year. “Okay, here I go. I’m going to wish that all your wishes come true.”
“Stop!”
“What?” I had been so ready to blow the seeds right off that dandelion head.
“You told me your wish, Mom.”
“Sorry.”
“No, it’s just that now you have to come up with something else. And for crying out loud, don’t tell me what it is.”
“Fine.” I studied the dandelion head as if it could tell me what to wish for. The saddest thing about wishing, sometimes, is that you suddenly realize how long your list of wishes is, and that you can’t possibly have them all.
My mental list included a time machine so that I could go back. Back before the accident. I would say NO about jumping on the neighbor’s trampoline, because there was no net. And I would go ahead and feel all the guilt for being the Supreme Ruiner of Fun, because now, knowing what I know, I would be completely okay with that. “Deal with it,” I would say to her little seven-year-old self. “Rules are rules.” Then she would run off and play, and she would never have to give up running and walking, ever.
Also on my wish list was a husband who could handle all the weird and crappy challenges of life. Because everyone gets a share in that. And drinking alcohol and having affairs is absolutely not the answer. But then, I have to say, sometimes when you face the fact that your wishes have not come true, it gives you the strength you need to kick someone squarely in the ass. Jenny and I were doing just fine on our own, weren’t we?
And finally, I suppose the other big one was wishing I really could have gone into that science career I always dreamed of. But of course Jenny’s accident had put an end to graduate school and eventually my marriage. Did I dare wish I could revive that dream? Where would I begin if wishes really mattered?
She was watching me as I lay there on my stomach, my hands holding the flower in front of me like a weird praying mantis. The sun lit up Jenny’s golden hair and I smiled. She bumped me with her elbow. “Don’t make a federal case of it, okay? Wish for something, already.”
I won’t say what I wished for, since now I’m somehow superstitious, but I will say that it was something about wishes coming true–kind of a modified version of the wish I told Jenny. I blew on the seeds until every last one sailed away on the breeze. Then the oddest thing happened.
She said, “Mom, do you remember that time when I was six and you took me way out to Carver Park one summer night to watch the Perseid meteor showers?”
I did remember that hot August night, and how we brought this very blanket and laid it out in a field, and then we lay on our backs and looked up at the heavens. Every few minutes a meteor would shoot across the sky, and sometimes we saw a few all at once. “Yes. We watched for satellites too. Remember? You always spotted them first.”
Down the road, someone was walking along toward us. Perhaps a neighbor coming home from work.
I heard Jenny sigh. “I picked out a really bright star. A twinkling one. And I made my first big wish. But… it never came true.”
I looked over at her. She was reaching for another dandelion gone to seed and holding it up as if she might be contemplating her next request. That girl was definitely not a quitter. “Well, what was it? What was your first big wish?”
“A puppy.” She looked at me and smiled. “I wanted a black one, with fuzzy ears and a white tip on its tail.”
I felt sad at that moment. If only she had told me. Here she was, fifteen years old. She had wanted a puppy since she was six.
She looked down the street at the approaching figure, and now we could hear the sound of wheels. It seemed the person was pulling a cart or a wagon.
“Perhaps it’s not too late,” I said. “After all, the nearest star to us is 4.25 lightyears away. That’s why wishes take at least nine years to come true.”
She bumped me with her elbow again and laughed. “You and your crazy science facts!”
The person came close enough, at last, for us to see her. It was Miranda Brock from two streets over. We normally only saw her when there was a big neighborhood event, like the annual garage sale.
“Good afternoon, ladies. I thought I might find you home, and I wanted to give you first pick.” Miranda smiled at us. She was a spry fifty-something who always wore jogging suits and looked as if she went to fitness classes.
I looked at Jenny and tried not to giggle. “Our pick of what?”
“Puppies!” Miranda turned to her wagon, which held a crate. She opened the crate’s hinged door and pulled out two cute puppies, one light brown, and one fuzzy and black with a white tip on its tail.
The next thing we knew, we had fallen in love with the little black one, a spunky little female terrier mix, which Jenny named “Wishie.”
That evening we sat at dinner. Jenny and Wishie were already inseparable and the dog rode on Jenny’s lap as she wheeled here and there in her wheelchair. But I insisted that Wishie spend time in her new little dog crate while we had our meal.
I put the food on the table and sat down to join Jenny. “I guess we’re a family of three again.”
“See? That’s why you must never tell anyone your wish.”
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This flash fiction piece was an entry in @anikekirsten‘s Fact to Fiction Writing Contest.
