A Purple Carpet

As I put the recycling on the curb this morning, I stared at our front lawn with amazement. The grass has been green for a few weeks now, with three trims already this spring, but today, our front yard was carpeted with purple. Hundreds of wild violets had sprung up overnight, joined by the bright yellow of their dandelion sisters, and I am absolutely delighted! Those April showers really were raining violets!

My husband doesn’t share my delight, however, for the lawn perfectionist I’m married to expects to see green, not purple and yellow. How can I find a way to sabotage the lawnmower for a few days so I can enjoy the kiss of color Mother Nature spread across our lawn?

Spring has also brought a parade of ants to our kitchen counter and office window ledge. I’m not quite as welcoming to them as I am to the violets, but they have been fascinating to watch for a few seconds before I send them to the Great Beyond. I’ve even seen a few trying to drag away the corpse of one of their siblings – I’m not sure what they planned to do with the body, but I didn’t give them a chance to express either their grief or cannibalistic tendencies. Since I don’t want them in my food or crawling up my arm, I’ve become an ant-buster, banishing them from my home with a vengeance.

While  spraying the ledges and squashing the wandering ants, I catch myself humming a few bars of The Ants Go Marching One by One song, a favorite of the lovely Madelyn Simone. At age 3, she’s at the stage where she gets fixated on a favorite song (The Ants), story (The Napping House) or movie (Wreck It Ralph). On our trip back to her house in Canton last week, we sang along with the Ants song nineteen times. Yes, I counted.

It’s been twenty years since I spent much time with a three-year-old, and I am seeing the world through a new set of eyes. Ants are fascinating friends, as are rocks, puddles, and tiny violets. A piece of ABC gum stuck to the supermarket floor demands an investigation, while bubbles dancing in the sunshine captivate our granddaughter for a long, long time. In her concentration, singing the same song or ‘reading’ the same book over and over again, she becomes familiar with one thing, not bombarded with the multitude of daily sound-bites that multiply faster than the violets or the ants.

I am learning some marvelous lessons as I sense the world through Madelyn’s eyes. I found a quote by Walt Streightiff who tells us there are no seven wonders of the world in the eyes of a child – there are seven million wonders. I tried to find him on the internet without success, but I’m convinced he must be a grandparent to know that. He’s absolutely correct – everything Madelyn sees begs to be touched, everything she touches demands to be explored, and everything she explores is to be regarded with awe and wonder. As Jodi Picoult describes it, “kids think with their brains cracked wide open,” a perfect description of wonder.

So where have we gone wrong as we’ve grown into adulthood? Where have we lost our sense of wonder? If, as Margaret Wolfe Hungerford is credited with saying, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” why have we – why have I – been willing to accept our culture’s definitions of beauty? I really do want to know who decided that manicured lawns were more desirable than flower-strewn meadows.

As I was finishing up this column, I heard the revving of the lawnmower engine, and I now know that my plea to save the innocent violets fell on deaf ears. I just hope they grow again in time for Madelyn’s next visit. If you happen to see the two of us on our front lawn, you’re welcome to come and sit a spell, take your shoes off, and join us as we count the delicate purple petals, wiggle our bare feet in the grass, and blow the dandelion snow into the sky.