Gabrielle’s Magical Notebook

Once upon a time there was a dandelion born on a spring day. She pushed open her yellow petals and got her first look at the sky. A breeze blew the clouds past her gaze and her very first thought was that they were dancing. She twitched her leaves and petals in clumsy imitation and swayed in the breeze.

The dandelion grew under the bright sun. She drank up the dew in the morning and smiled at the tulips that surrounded her. And when a breeze came by she always spread her leaves out wide and swayed.

“Look,” she said turning her yellow face to a red tulip, “I’m dancing!”

The tulip looked down at the little dandelion, surprised. The flowers didn’t often speak to weeds; it was unseemly. But he saw no reason to be cruel so he nodded his head gravely.

“A dance is a series of rhythmic and patterned bodily movements usually performed to music,” he said quite correctly. But the dandelion had already looked away. She had her eyes closed and was imagining herself twirling and leaping.

The dandelion would watch the birds swoop and dive in the air above her. She leaned over to a lily and said, “Wouldn’t you just love to dance like that?”

The lily considered the birds in the air. “No,” she said. “It looks most dangerous. An unseemly and impractical way of transport.” But the dandelion was staring transfixed at the birds, flapping her leaves up and down.

When the sun was overhead the dandelion would watch the heat shimmer off the sidewalk. She yelled across the sidewalk to the clover on the other side. “Don’t you wish you could move like that?”

The clover were all startled by someone speaking to them. For a moment it looked like at least one would respond, but then they all hid under their leaves. The dandelion didn’t mind. She was busy trying to bend and shimmer.

One day when the dandelion’s leaves had all changed from bright yellow to fuzzy white a child picked her. When the child scrunched her eyes closed the dandelion wondered if she was imagining a dance. Then the little girl blew on the dandelion and blew all her fuzzy petals away.

They spun end over end, swooping in the wind. They twirled, spinning around each other. They soared and flew through the air, a cloud of dandelion seeds dancing in the breeze.