I am very in favor of Mankind Project’s “mission of service” until it happens to conflict with the time I arise on Saturday morning. That’s when I grumble a bit of disagreement.

Nevertheless, I dragged myself from sleep and stumbled over to Dan’s home early yesterday morning so that we could join other sleep-eyed New Warriors to work for Habitat for Humanity. Dan organized about 14 of us to work with Habitat’s Master Gardeners to landscape a home in North Minneapolis. We cleared dead lawn, planted (and cedar-chipped) dozens of perennials, and left the family with an entirely different yard.

Well, they did that.

I was busy in the back yard.

When we first arrived, the back curtains in the first-floor windows seemed to swoosh open and then close mysteriously, fluttering every few seconds as if by a strong wind inside the house. And yet, no one was standing there. Spooky. But easily explained by the childrens’ father. Curious about the visitors, it would seem his children were also shy. All seven of his children were under the age of nine, with only one of them too young to jerk the curtains open and then run away.

A few minutes later, we gathered in the front yard and leaned on rakes to listen to the Master Gardeners’ master plan. As they explained bush placement, the front curtains performed their whiplash dance once again. I went to investigate. I know, I know, I should have been attentively listening to the Big Boss big plans, but I figured someone would point and say, “Dig here” and I could do that without understanding the comprehensive blueprint.

Instead, I made goofy faces into the living room picture window. I crossed my eyes and bared my teeth, I scrunched my nose up and then made my eyeballs go completely white. Each new facial tic was followed by a chorus of screeching as children who ran away from the window and then ran right back. I taunted them by turning away from them until one of them gently tapped the window, then I would flip to face them with my face contorted in some bizarre new expression.

I am very much my father’s son.

They screamed and fled; returned and screamed. Tapped on the window and I spun around again. Repeat as necessary.

When it came time to get the work, I assigned myself the odd job of uprooting hundreds of backyard dandelions. When the first four of volunteers had arrived a bit earlier, one of the Master Gardeners surveyed the yellow carpeted lawn with us and she said with obvious disappointment, “Well, we’re just mostly focusing on the front yard today. It’s too bad because yellow is the symbol of drought in his culture.”

Say no more.

I’m a fan of metaphor, symbols, and I know how the universe sometimes uses weeds, and free bags of ice to communicate. I know how best friends, new friends, and even compassionate strangers become vessels in my life to greater love. I can dig it, this time literally. So, I’m all over the yellow drought flowers. They have to go.

Of course, I don’t pull the dandelions in my own yard (though I often wish my neighbors were overly-ambitious and had a lawn fetish). But there I knelt and started digging with that long skinny two-tonged yard implement that looks like a stretched-out fork. I bet that thing has a real name, but I’m too lazy to google it.

I rooted weeds for a while, enjoying this satisfying chore and accumulating quite a pile of dead yellows, when suddenly I heard that familiar tapping from the back window. The curtains whooooooshed once again.

“Make a funny face!” I would hear the muffled cries from behind glass. “Make a face!”

“Sorry,” I called cheerfully to them from the yard. “I have to work now.”

“Make a funny face!” they cried.

“Come help me.” I called back. “Come help.”

Over the course of the next half hour, we taunted each other until they made tentative steps onto the back porch and then even daring to come and stand right next to me while I sweated over the next extraction. The weed pile grew bigger.
“Wanna help?” I would suggest and they would giggle and run away, chattering happily in Somali.

You have not seen such gorgeous children. Each of them, more handsome than the next. Only my four handsome cousins have ever rivaled that kind of beauty in one set of siblings. (Shout out to Anita, Bithika, Kamala, and Narayan.) Shy and laughing, eager and playful, four of the seven gradually came to say my name aloud before running away: “Ep-mon.” (We were wearing name tags.) The two youngest of the six walking kids (and apparently twins), sat on the back steps with their tiny hands on their little knees, wide-eyed at all the excitement.

One of the Master Gardeners had brought a kid-sized trowel and shovel, as well as cute little work gloves for smaller hands. I gathered them together and tried to give demonstrations on how to pull out dandelions by the root.

“See, the best satisfaction comes from getting out as much of the root as possible without damaging the surrounding soil.”

That was what I intended to say.

I think I got as far as “…best sat-” and the four children scattered across the yard to start digging. One ditched his little-kid-shovel and dragged an adult shovel across 50 dandelions in search of one to dig out. Two found adult-sized hand trowels.

They all began eagerly attacking the lawn.

I twitched a little bit because nobody stayed for the lesson, but how hard could this be? And yeah, I’m a control freak sometimes, so I ordered myself to chill out and let the little energy balls go dig. Knock yourselves out, kids.

The first one returned with a trowel full of mostly grass and one yellow dandelion.

“See?” she said to me shyly.

“Yes, that’s very good.” I said, but honestly, I think she picked that dandelion and just set it atop some hand-pulled grass.

She ran away to dump it in the pile.

“Yes?” said the oldest boy, who had a wide smile. “See?”

“Yes,” I said. “That’s right, now try to…”

And he ran away to join his sister at the dandelion burial mound.

“This is a big one.” challenged his little brother. I liked this kid a lot. His chubby cheeks and middle-child status somehow reminded me of me; I felt a kindred spirit. “It’s big!”

“Yes, it’s great.” I said, eager to give a little more tip on how to get it deeper at the root.

He smiled this big happy smile and jerked away. Off to the graveyard for weeds.

The younger sister presented a genuinely harvested dandelion in a generous divot of dirt.

“OH.” I said, a little alarmed. “I think that’s uh…you got one, yeah.”

This is why we have instructions, people. Not that I uh…myself listened to the Master Gardeners that morning. (koff, koff…hypocrite.) But still. Order. Rules. There is a reason we don’t just go scouring all over the yard and scooping up chunks of healthy grass.

“THIS is a big one.” Said the older brother.

“Yes.” I said a little less generously.

“How about this one?” said the next kid in line. “Big one?”

“Yes, it sure is. Yeah.”

See, the cycle of energetic children meant that one was very frequently standing in front of me and I now couldn’t get much done. So not only was one side of the yard being hammered with shovels, but it was also worse: I wasn’t getting anything DONE.

And that’s where I often seem to stall in life. Being a better person, growing my compassion is fine, yes yes, that’s good and all. But now I’m at WORK. Or now I’m BUSY. And that’s where I often drop the ball. I know your feelings are important, but Best Buy closes in half an hour and I have two other errands. Call you back.

You ever get like that?

I daydream that my compassion or big-heartedness is going to be needed sometime while I’m hosting the Oscars. Or when there is a burning orphanage and someone has to go rescue Skittles, the beloved kitty trapped upstairs. Yes, the Big Shining Moments. (Although honestly…Skittles would be shit-out-of-luck if it were up to me ’cause I get easily confused about directional orientation, especially when I’m in trapped in a burning building with a terrified, scratch-happy cat.)

So maybe I’m not ready for the big moments in life yet. I still have to keep practicing on the small ones. I forget the small ones are available pretty much daily - the chance to be a king in someone’s life. A king. And whenever I keep waiting for the Big Shining Moment, I forget that it might be happening right now.

I had to decide what was more important: pick the dandelions THE RIGHT WAY or accept these gardeners presenting their finest work?

I decided to become The Dandelion King.

“This is a big one, isn’t it” said the eldest, eyes beaming.

“It’s incredible.” I cried. “You’re awesome!”

He bolted.

“I did this one myself!” cried his sister. “I did it.”

“You’re doing beautifully.” I exclaimed.

I had seen their father enter the backyard and after watching the parade of children to Ed-mon-d (they had improved significantly), he laughed and started digging himself. His children ran to him and softly, cried “Aabbe, aabbee!” (”Father, father!”) and he would put a dandelion on their shovel and the kid would carry it to me for approval before its demise on the weed pile.

“You are wonderful.” I sometimes said and I hoped they heard that it was about you kid, not your work. Not your deeds. You don’t have to earn praise. You’re always going to be good enough.

One of the two youngest girls from the porch cautiously joined in, seeing the excitement in her brothers and sisters. She walked to me carefully balancing a trowel of dirt, 100% free of weeds or greenery of any kind. Just a pile of dirt.

She stood before me with her eyes on me expectantly. She spoke no English, so there was nothing she could say.

“You are the most wonderful dandelion picker!” I grinned at her and hoped she could see the message behind the words.

She nodded a little before she turned and walked to the weed pile. Or maybe just drooped her head because a hand-trowel full of dirt is pretty heavy for a two-year old. But I prefer to think she understood what I said and she acknowledged me.

Who doesn’t want a blessing from The Dandelion King?

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 18th, 2008 at 9:21 pm and is filed under Warrior. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.