Don't Forget the Dandelions and the Dirty Knees!
Written by Katarina Claire
I grew up with a Japanese maple tree beside my bedroom window. It watched over me as I slept; in the winter, its skeletal branches reached out to graze its fingertips against the moon who had followed me home, and as the seasons passed, leaves sprouted from its arms in vivid greens, then crazed hues of amber, mahogany, and scarlet. During the day, I would scale its limbs and find a little nook to read in its joints. When I’d finally come down at twilight, my legs would bear a multitude of scratches and pieces of bark would live in the webs of my fingers. I’d wash myself off, then scale its limbs again the next day.
Upon starting high school, I moved my desk to face the window its fingers brushed against. One day, I unknowingly climbed it one last time, trading embraces in its arms for longing gazes through the windowpane. I can’t remember the exact last time I touched my Japanese maple tree.
If I were to climb a tree now at the trembling cusp of adulthood, I’d be gawked at for my audacity. I can no longer pump my legs on the swing set to soar higher, nor can I wildly dance in a downpour, arms stretching to catch the raindrops. The simple act of reaching for the sky is now a declaration of irresponsibility, for adulthood requires a careful distance from childhood abandon. Whispers of judgement would swirl, as though I had slipped back into a buried time and forgotten the duties I had to attend, something in between washing the dishes and asking for a raise. I have to be an adult. Children can live with soil on the soles of their feet and blades of grass in between their toes, but grown-ups must smack pavement onto the ground so we don’t get ourselves dirty. We must drive our cars when walking or biking would suffice, and nod our heads along as our president utters the words,“ drill, baby, drill.” We must not panic when our country withdraws from the Paris Climate Accord, because global warming won’t end the world in our lifetime, anyway. However, we must never climb trees. We aren’t children.
But sometimes, when the summer air is thick with the scent of grass and August stickiness, and the hum of cicadas moves lazily in the breeze, we remember it again. We scurry around the yard with bare feet and dirt nestled in the wrinkles of our knees. We pluck blackberries from the bushes in the garden and press them onto our fingertips, their juices running down our palms to our wrists and staining our hands with purple pulp. We make wishes on dandelions and blow their seeds into the draft and we pluck the petals off of daisies as we sing“ he loves me, he loves me not.” We don’t care about the dirt or the juice that our moms will furiously scrub off that night. In their adulthood, they will scold us for playing like animals, and we’ll nod our little heads along and promise not to dirty our knees again, but the vow has already slipped right out of our minds when we step outside the next day. The Earth is our greatest playmate, and we play with her in childlike wonder.
But the moment is fleeting. We cast this feeling to the furthest depths of our consciousness, and drive our gasoline-powered cars and build our skyscrapers and leave our trash on the ground. We are so infatuated by the idea that we are the most intelligent life on Earth that we forget energy can neither be created nor destroyed; we came from the Earth, and upon death, we will return to Her as our caskets lower themselves into the floor and our ashes flutter with the wind into the ocean. Our flesh will break down and become part of the rich soil that nurtures new life. Our bones, too, will slowly dissolve, releasing minerals back into the ground. Our bodies, having lived and then passed, will no longer be ours—they never were. We merely borrow them from Her to experience sentient life. We are the Earth experiencing Herself.
The kids know this. They run barefoot through the fields, hands stained with the juice of blackberries, and they press their fingers into the earth without hesitation. For adults, the Earth is something to conquer; for the children, She is someone to be in communion with. The children are the soil, the roots, the leaves, and the air.
I was once that Japanese maple tree. Now, like every adolescent must do on the brink of inescapable maturity, I have forgotten. When I return to my house, though the neighborhood kids remember something I don’t and scurry up and down our cul-de-sac in gleeful symphonies as they grasp ladybugs and loose leaves, I do not play in the dirt, nor do I play in the snow. Instead, I rip my boots off the soles of my unmuddied feet who once bore the soil of its divine home, and I long for my Japanese maple tree through a man-made window and in my insistence for my mother not to cut it down. Perhaps, on another summer’s day when the sticky air smells like grass, the breeze carries the chirps of the cicadas, and I am overcome by childlike wonder, I will return to myself and climb into its arms again. I hope it will forgive me for my forgetfulness. I hope it will cradle me. I imagine it to be the most wondrous homecoming plausible.
