On my way into town for some beer and groceries, I noticed the engine gauge on my dashboard going berserk. I pulled off to the side of the road and opened the hood. Coolant, all over my foot.
As I stood around waiting for the mechanic to install my new radiator (magically I had pulled off the road and right into the lot of a fix-it garage), I vaguely eavesdropped on his conversation with another customer and mostly stared into space. I was thinking about my future: a dream-life with a perfectly new and always-reliable car; a life with no car at all.
Suddenly, a little girl appeared before me.
"This is for you," she said, offering up a very long-stemmed dandelion. She stared with confidence at her hands as they convened with mine, successfully passing the gift. She stared at my stomach, where, had I been her height, there would have been eyes staring back.
"Thank you," I managed, climbing out of my thoughts, somewhat cloudily taking her in. "That's a beautiful thing."
++
I know it's cliche to talk about the naivete of children, and how we, the unfeeling "adults" should strive to imitate their candor more often in our daily lives. But perhaps because of my surroundings -- a greasy, spare-parts laden garage in the middle of a dusty highway-- something about this particular child and her particular offering struck me as special.
I was thinking about money, the pain of having to fork it over in a sum that would nicely inhibit my freedom in the coming weeks. But then this girl, this flower. This way she told me it was "for me." Not just the dandelion, the car bills. But this experience, this day, this life. And despite all the noise, all the inconsistencies and inconveniences, what remained salient, really, was this little act of human tenderness. And indeed she is what I remembered returning home that afternoon. Not the car.
++
Home, I ate fresh blueberries with milk. I ate them in a little white dish, slowly, by the spoonful, with lots of white sugar on top. I tilted the bowl at the end to drink up the last of the milk, which was cool and sweet and only ever so slightly blue.
