Scrambled Eggs

When my mother was a little girl, probably around ten years old, which by today’s standards is no longer a little girl in the sense that is was back then, she liked to play dolls with her girlfriend. She said they would play house in an old shed and pretend they were the mothers and their dolls were their babies. She recalled finding empty crates to use for their dolls cribs. Sadly, today very few ten year olds play with dolls. They are dancing, singing and dressing up like the latest pop star being pushed on them via television, radio and the media.
One warm summer day while visiting my mother we were sitting outside, as we did on many occasions when the weather would allow it, I was recalling a flower that grew wild at the end of the street I grew up on. I would often pick one or two on a walk around the block. They were tiny yellow and white flowers atop tall, thin, green stems. If you squeezed them on the sides of the flower it would open up like a mouth. I used to pretend the flower could talk, like a ventriloquist’s dummy. I never cared to know the name of this flower. As a child a flower was just a flower. I looked at it and saw the pretty colors and wondered what it smelled like, what it could do, thinking it must have a purpose. As an adult, I have learned to put a name to or classify everything. As if doing so will somehow make sense of it when in reality it only eliminates the simple joy of its wonder. Yet, my need to do this has caused me to learn that these interesting little flowers are known as Snapdragons.
When it was time to feed their baby dolls they would pick the tiny yellow and white flowers, plucking them from their stems. Once they collected enough they would fill a bowl and feed them to their babies pretending they were scrambled eggs.
It was such a simple idea and recalling it brought a childlike smile to my mothers face and warmth in her eyes. I too was touched just by the thought of it. This, I thought, is the kind of childhood I want for my children. This is the kind of simple pleasures I long to know in my own life. A life full of simplicity and all that it beholds is available to us all. Innocence in its purest form can still be found all around us.
Let this be a reminded to us all to try to find some scrambled eggs and fill our bowl each day.