Consider the Dandelions

Or, Maybe I'll always be making peace with autism

It’s Wednesday evening, just before 7:00pm, and I am one small pack of nails away from finishing my new wall decor. Nothing fancy, just soft, white squares of wall padding, decoratively (if one can call wall padding decorative) hung in the places around the house where Cannon most frequently hits his head. I finally bought the padding two weeks before this, after putting it off for months with the prayer that we wouldn’t need it.

Alas, we do. He does. (But honestly, the padding doesn’t look so bad, once you get used to it.)

It’s getting closer to bedtime, but I see a window to get to Home Depot, and an opportunity to bring Cannon with me by himself, which I so rarely have. Getting out in public, walking through stores appropriately, learning to pay for things before leaving said stores with those items in his hands—that’s all good practice for him. Plus it’s 7:00pm, there will be lighter crowds, less wait time, it all feels right. I can finish my wall padding, get Cannon out of the house for a real-world lesson, come back home for bedtime and call it “done” on another long summer day.

I’m very familiar with where to go for what I most often need at our local Home Depot at this point—dry wall patch kits and putty are straight ahead and to the right, near the paint; and the wall texture I like, the one with no odor that dries the fastest, is one aisle over. But since I only need a pack of very small finishing nails this time, I have to find someone and ask them where to go, and this raises the stakes just a little. What no one else in the store could know is that the timer on Cannon’s internal compliance clock started the moment I got him buckled in the backseat of the car. I have no idea when it will go off, or when this shopping trip will be over, whether I like it or not, and whether we have what we came for or not. But I can hear the imaginary ticking in my head and I start walking faster. I need someone in an orange apron, stat.

Thankfully, it takes only a minute, and the kind young man points me and Cannon to aisle 18. We find our package of nails, and head for the self-pay kiosk, where I have Cannon help me with the scanner—because somehow, I am still holding on to hope that maybe, if he can learn this skill, someday I’ll be able to send Cannon into a store to buy something all by himself.

But all in all, this five-minute trip into Home Depot has gone perfectly. And plenty of five-minute trips in the past have not, so I don’t take any store trips for granted. Cannon has held my hand, gone where I’ve led him, never looked at me with a devious smile on his face while reaching for a hammer or drill or any other potentially life-threatening tool, and stayed next to me while we paid. I tell him, “Great job, buddy!” and give him a high-five. “Should we go home now?” I ask. He takes my hand and says, “Yes.”

The two automatic doors open to the breezy summer evening as Cannon and I step outside. The air is warm, and the sun is setting to our right, over the horizon in the west. And there, just two feet from the door, it flies by in a flash, right in front of us, floating along wherever the wind chooses to take it: the dandelion.

Before I can even say a word, there goes Cannon, straight into the parking lot, running after it.

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The dandelion plant, also known as the taraxacum, is found on every continent on earth except Antarctica. There are hundreds of variations of the plant, but mostly they are known for their bright yellow hues and weed-like leaves. A few weeks after it flowers, the yellow petals become a round seed head—some are small, others can grow as large as a basketball—and the wind can carry the seeds up to 60 miles away from its previous location, which makes this the farthest traveling passive seed known in the world. It’s really an engineering marvel, and scientists have even worked to model drones after the dandelion seeds, to see if human ingenuity can keep up with a miraculous, God-given ability to fly.

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The evening breeze is strong; not quite a wind gust, but not exactly gentle, either. The dandelion flies on, dipping down then up, eluding the reach of my 12-year-old as he yells for it to stop and chases for the next 50 yards into, blessedly, a mostly-empty parking lot.

Dandelions do not listen for their names to be called, unfortunately. Parents of a child with severe autism know this reality all too well.

I’ve kept up with Cannon into the middle of the parking lot, where he gives up as the dandelion flies out of sight. But I know, I already know before I open my mouth, what has just happened to my buddy is not consolable. Cannon immediately starts screaming, winding up as if he plans to hit his head at full force on the cement, pleading with a natural world he cannot control, “Plant come down! Plant come down! PLANT. COME. DOWN!”

“Buddy, the wind blew it away,” I try ever so gently to explain to him, hoping logic can intercept the impending meltdown. But Cannon already knows this. In spite of his limited communication, he’s very smart. It’s not knowledge that Cannon cannot grasp, it’s acceptance.

Which I understand. Acceptance, too, is the hardest part for me.

“No wind blew it away! No wind! No wind!” he repeats, trying desperately to undo the last twenty seconds, to rewind and make the wind slow down just a moment longer. Half a second more is all he needed for that dandelion to stop on the ground long enough for him to grab it. The disappointment is too much.

“I’m sorry buddy. Do you still want to go home?” I offer.

“No home! No home! No home! PLANT. COME. DOWN!”

With a small package of nails in my hand, a purse around my shoulder, and a boy far too big and strong to force back into the car, I grab Cannon’s hand, and right there, in the middle of the Home Depot parking lot, sit down with my son.

Because this I have accepted: We are not going home right now.

Luckily, I have the sunset to watch while we wait.

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In addition to their remarkable talent for flight, dandelions have been used in food and medicine for most of recorded human history. The entire plant is edible: the leaves, stem, flowers, and roots. It’s a good source of vitamins A, C, and K, as well as calcium, potassium, iron, and manganese. And that’s not just for humans. The dandelion is a life source to many animals, like bees, squirrels, deer, and other wildlife.

There’s just that one small issue, I’m sure most of you know: the dandelion is considered a weed, which is why I’ve been digging them out of my front and back yard all summer. A weed is any plant growing where it isn’t wanted, and dandelions seem to be pretty good at that. They thrive in lawns, fields, and sidewalk cracks. In Denali National Park in Alaska, they actually have an annual event called “Dandelion Demolition Day”, where the public is invited to help staff get rid of as many dandelions as possible throughout the park.

So it’s complicated to find a category, isn’t it? Because the dandelion is a creative, engineering marvel, and an important food source, and helpful—even vital—to the ecosystem around it. And it can also be so pervasive it invades and ruins crops, so it’s been reduced to a noxious weed we try desperately to get out of our yards.

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After five, maybe six minutes waiting on a cement parking block (I don’t actually know how long it was, time is strange in moments like this) and one friendly man making sure the crying boy and his mom in the middle of the parking lot were okay, I ask Cannon, “Do you want to go back to the car buddy.”

“NO!” he retorts, but he gets up and walks to the car anyway. His words have always had a hard time matching his body.

I open the car door and guide him to his seat, then ask him again, “Should we go home?” but his emphatic response is, “NO! PLANT. COME. DOWN!”, so I open the driver’s side door and sit down, too, letting my legs hang off the side of the seat. The breeze is actually very nice tonight, a quintessentially “summer breeze” if you will—not too hot, not too cold. Refreshing, really. Just strong enough to blow a dandelion out of reach.

But as Cannon looks into the sky, willing his dandelion to come back, it occurs to me that maybe I should talk to God about this. Maybe I should just start praying for another dandelion to blow by our car, so we can go home.

I’ve not been shy about how hard prayer has been for me in the past few years. I have felt, and often still do feel, that my prayers for God’s intervention hit the ceiling before they get to his ears. I know they don’t. I know He hears every single one. It’s not so much his ability and presence I’ve doubted, it’s his kindness. Because I’ve been so sad, and so frustrated that so many longing prayers have gone unanswered. That my boy still struggles in his own mind so much, when all I’m asking for is his peace.

But one thing I am not is a quitter. So maybe it’s been retired-athlete grit or flat-out stubbornness, or simply the grace of the Holy Spirit to not give up on me (it’s definitely the last one), but I’ve been trying desperately to train my brain to keep praying. To channel the persistent widow and pester God incessantly for a little of His time and a lot of His intervention.

And right now, I need a dandelion.

So I start asking for one.

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Calling dandelions a weed really is unfair, I think. Dandelions are one of the first food sources of the spring for bees and other pollinators, who come out of winter hibernation hungry and ready to get to work for, you know, our entire food supply. And the dandelions are there when very few other pollinating flowers are. Their deep taproots also pull nutrients up from the soil and break up compacted ground, so the soil can breathe and actually grow more. The same toughness we find annoying in a perfect, pleasing-to-the-eye, manicured lawn is exactly what makes dandelions so useful. That’s interesting to think about, isn’t it? That the inconvenience is actually the best thing for the soil. It makes me wonder, is that what inconvenience does for a soul, too—helps it grow?

A florist once wrote that the dandelion’s symbolism is so much more meaningful than we give it credit for, because “it blooms where it is least expected, [and] survives what tidier plants cannot.... Hope, endurance, and new beginnings: the dandelion earns every bit of that meaning honestly.” [1]

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Tyler Staton wrote in his book about prayer that we should, “Ask vulnerably, with enough specificity that God has the chance to disappoint you or surprise you. Ask boldly, with enough empowerment that you wonder if you’re allowed to be this forward with God.”

Specifically, I need a dandelion seed. And boldly, I need it now. So, here we go:

Dear Lord, I am asking you please, right now, from the front seat of my car, on a breezy evening in July, would you please send another dandelion through the wind, near this car, and within reach of us, so that Cannon’s mind can rest, so he’ll stop hurting his head, and so that we can go home? Amen.

I wait a few seconds. And ask again. And again. And again.

Cannon is still whimpering in the back seat, quietly muffling “Plant come down” through a defeated voice. So I keep going:

Lord, I don’t understand autism. I’m really tired of trying to. But I do know this boy needs a dandelion. I’m asking again, please send one.

I scan the parking lot. Leaves are blowing about, a few more customers are making their way to their car, and then home. It seems so easy for them, and I admit, I’m a little bit jealous of people who can just walk in and walk out of a store.

Cannon is still begging for his plant to come down. I am weary, and I want to go home. This was supposed to be just a quick trip to Home Depot for nails.

And then…

Y’all, hand to heaven, I would never lie to you, there it goes. Another dandelion, being carried by the wind through the parking lot.

I jump out of my seat so fast and say “Cannon, mommy will get it!” It blows ten feet further and hits the ground, but as I reach for the dainty white whisps, it skips a little further away. I dodge a parking block, a cart return corral, and reach again, and miss.

The dandelion makes one more hop, lands near another parking block, and the gentle seed decides to wait there for me, and for Cannon. I reach down and grab it, careful to keep it from falling apart in my hand, and turn around to see how far across the parking lot I’ve actually run. Half a soccer field, maybe? I cup the fragile little seed in my hand and run victoriously back to Cannon, who is waiting for me eagerly.

“Cannon! I got the plant! Here you go buddy!” I gently place it into his not so little anymore hands. He smiles, holds it, and promptly blows it away again.

And I start laughing. Because we sat in a parking lot and waited, and waited, and then I chased this thing down, and it’s gone again already, off to somewhere in the world where it will seed and take root and help the soil, or be torn up by a homeowner who wants more curb appeal, or turned into tea or added to a salad, or maybe it will just die somewhere. I don’t know.

I don’t know much about God’s ways, if I’m honest. What’s meant to sanctify us, what’s simply the reality of a broken world? What am I frustrated with that He is actually using for His glory and my good?

Life is so full of complicated, paradoxical truths, isn’t it?

But I do know this: my son just really needed to make a wish tonight. And so God sent another dandelion, and I helped him chase it down, which I think is important work in the world, don’t you? And now, Cannon is at peace, which, really, is the answer to my prayers.

Is God smiling at us as we drive home right now? I think about that, and how He really could have made this easier, but maybe, sending the middle-aged mom of eight running through a parking lot chasing the wind felt more fun.

But, I’ll also never forget the sunset behind Home Depot tonight, and I’ll never see a dandelion blow by without thinking, What prayer are you answering with that one, God?

[1] Ace Flowers, Houston, TX