Dandelions

“He loves me, he loves me not.”

Most little girls have an odd habit of playing this game. They pluck each of the petals from flowers to see if whoever they are thinking of has affections for them. They don’t think of how pretty the flower is—what a tragedy it is that the flower has died without even the purpose of having its beauty taken up for human pleasure—they just want to see if what they want to hear from their own voice that what their heart says is true.

By the time the girl comes to a certain age, she either forgets to play the game altogether, or learns that flowers are often void of entropy, and remain bound by patterns. In the beginning, little girls play with simpler flowers of five of so petal each. And why? The attention span is short to keep their minds growing and learning from the world around them. By learning—by the process of constant growth and racing thoughts (often diagnosed as having a short attention span) they learn the basics of pattern.

If a flower has four petals, he will not love you. For five petals, he will. That is unchanging. The pattern always comes in groupings of two, and divided by two, should there be any remainder (this is how children begin to learn division) the result is constant. Yet, by knowing this, some begin to play with flowers they could never learn to divide, and hope that the result is somehow different. They try to avoid the convention that their idea of love can be explained by mathematics.

In high school a girl takes a course in biology, and then perhaps in psychology. They learn that love is perhaps not explainable by mathematics but by a similar discipline—science. The chemicals that interact and interweave within the brain are the basis of all functions—love included. Yet, knowing this, they are prone to love. They seem to give all their life experience and schooling up for the affections of another child. They allow themselves to fall in love—and the knowledge as to how is a mystery to me.

When I was a little girl, I too, picked petals from plants. However, my plant of choice was a dandelion. I would only ever pick the weed during recess, and sit and pick the petals once by one muttering the chant of girlhood, “he loves me, he loves me not.” Where I differ is that I never finished plucking the petals. They were too numerous to count and sort into those two groups before the school bell rang. I would throw my half-plucked dandelion to the ground and race inside for class.

Had I completed this rite of passage as a child, would I now have the grace to fall in love? Had I chosen Buttercups or California Poppies as opposed to a weed, would that give me some chance?