A pod of wishes

There is a tree in our yard that is hard to see, nestled as it is in the midst of bolder, taller and more boastful trees.

Its demur boughs are entwined in a tangle of branches. You would hardly know it was there at all, and I almost never pay attention to it. But what caught my eye today, as I wrestled with a stubborn, thorny nemesis nearby, were the drapings of shimmering, gossamer pods.

The tree looked enchanted, lit up as if from within, by the light of the translucent pods. It was as if a fairy had hung the seeds of a thousand dreams on the tips of its branches.

(Now it all makes sense: This is what the tooth fairy does! It isn't our children's teeny teeth that she wants. It is the dreams that are born with, and borne by, each tooth lost. Each tooth that falls out, each tooth excitedly placed beneath the pillow, captures the delight, the dreams, of our children. It ferries them between their worlds of fantasy and growth, childhood and maturity. The tooth fairy gathers these innocent, inchoate dreams, before they get lost in the passage of time, and adorns the world with them.)

The pods are frail, yet tenacious. They hang there together, two-by-two, bunch by bunch, throughout the winter, cradling the dreams of yesterday, the seeds of tomorrow.

Waiting. Waiting.

Waiting for us to remember and redeem them.

We are like the tree. We carry around our invisible, tenacious gossamer dreams, hidden in the rush of daily life so that we rarely notice them. They dangle, almost weightless, as we move, fluttering ever so gently in the gusts of time.

Then one day, when we are wrestling with the weeds of life nearby, we look up, and there they are.


And we remember, vaguely, the delight of childhood and the world we wanted to find, the world we wanted to create.