By Ez Siegler

Ah!  The much-maligned dandelion!  So spikey sleek in its youthful yellow attire, dotting, or, more often filling whole landscapes with their community.  The energy and frolic of an early spring bloom of all those yellow buttons certainly sets an annually memorable tone.

These resilient, determined, and persistent spots of sun give us an example of strength, hope, positivity, and survival.  As a consequence, the dandelion has accrued folklore status with myths and stories about dandelion chains and necklaces, the “tell” of holding a bloom beneath someone’s chin, the taste of dandelion wine, or the sun, moon, stars phases attributed to the dandelion life cycle. 

Some lawn-owning species wage war against the lowly dandelion, digging out the plants or chemically eradicating them to achieve a uniformly green lawn.  Other lawn-owning species are content to just mow the dandelions down.  I’ve observed that despite the eradicating and mowing, a colossal number of dandelions still are out there in Mother Nature’s yard.

It feels like the dandy yellow blooms are worn in a rush and soon yield to the attire of maturity.  Now, we see ancient bending stalks topped with a nucleus platform holding fuzzy seed helicopters, all configured into a white ball.  Ah!  The hairdos of the ancient.  It is the choice of their species, however.  An inadvertent brush or a little puff of wind sends the fuzzy seed helicopters into an airborne drift.  Their movement is a slow, aimless, continuous current-controlled drift.  If they are tumbling and sliding along and bump into an obstacle, the liberated fuzz creates a dandelion drift that may stay captured at that spot, or move en masse with the next whimsical wind.  And, still standing out there are some bald stalks.  A life cycle.  The dandelion life cycle.

My life cycle has had some similar “touch points” with the dandelion. Youth was filled with vibrant energy-filled “like journeyers.”  Lots of us!  Full of hope and determination!  Tincture of time diluted or diminished some of this fervor.  But connections weakened with less frequent interactions that I tend to recognize as “drift.”   Life paths diverge.  Community and relationship feelings slip and drift quietly sideways.  The well of energy required to hold all this together evaporates to a low water level.  I reflect on the many times I have experienced “drift.”

This may all be an experience called “dandelion syndrome.”  It is insidious and may happen over a lifetime.  With some awareness, choices can be made to avoid the diggers, the eradicators and the mowers.  We can love community.  We can find comfort in a breeze.  We can be fully present as we appreciate the “drift.”

Ah!  The joys of the ancient!

© 2025 Ez Siegler

Ez lives in Stoughton, WI with his wife.  Ez participated in a Sarah White Reminiscence Writing Workshop in 2009. Currently, he shares at the Stoughton Senior Center and the Rogue Writer’s Group at the Stoughton Library.