a strong, mental dandelion puff

My daughter left me when she was 19. She is now 35. I truly have no understanding of why she left. We rarely quarreled. I made mistakes as a parent, as all parents do but I was definitely not abusive. Perhaps my biggest mistake was overindulging her. And I think she hated that I am poor, have not worked much because of a disability (not my fault, eh?) and she might be ashamed of having a poor mother. But this is all guesswork and it is getting unusual for me to write such defensive thoughts. She left. I did nothing to deserve losing my only child. She's gone.

When she was about to turn 24, in 2006, I decided I would give her what she seemed to want. I had used versions of her name or my pet names for her for all my passwords, so that meant I was typing out names for her all the time, and trying to will her to come back. As a silent birthday gift, I changed all my passwords so I no longer typed any version of her name.

And, gosh this seems so long ago and in 2006 my feelings were so much more raw than they are now, I was getting pretty good at not longing for her.

For her 24th birthday, unbeknownst to her, I gave her my withdrawal from wanting her.

And on her actual birthday, and I planned this, I meditated for an hour. Then I held an image in my mind of a dandelion puff, all fluffy white seeds ready to be blown by the wind to seed new dandelions. My plan was to mentally blow away every bit of that dandelion puff and, in doing so, I hoped, I would be blowing away the way I was trying so hard within myself to hang onto her.

Consciously, I was fully committed to letting her go emotionally. And I really believed the dandelion puff blowing, which was something I made up. would help me.

I did not foresee that I would be unable, even in a mental image in my mind, to blow away many of the seeds on that dandelion puff.

I tried to blow her away. I tried to let her go. And my mind, or spirit, just could not do it.

And here I am, 16 years into her withdrawal from my life, and my longing does not abate.

I shared with a former acquaintance, someone I confused as a friend for several years, my dandelion puff ritual. When I told him that I had been unable to blow away much of the dandelion seeds in my mental visualization he said "That is one tough dandelion."

I gave little thought, back then, to the weed I chose. Now, laughing at myself and loving myself, I am thinking about how ubiquitous dandelions can be and how hard it is to get them our of a lawn. One has to get every bit of the stem and the stem is nearly always longer than one things, to get rid of just one dandelion. It is best to weed dandelions when the ground is very wet. It can feel so lovely to pull a particularly large dandelion and tug it just right and see the entire root come out of the wet ground:  it tapers down to a tiny point but often there is more below ground than above and many miss all the below ground bits, or most of the below ground bits.

say, maybe that was my mistake. Instead of blowing at a dandelion puff, perhaps I should visualize weeding a lawn or garden patch full of dandelions, visualize pulling them up all the way to the end of each root.

I will try this sometime. Sometime soon. I am tired of my grief. It is always hard near my birthday.