My Favorite Flower

Yesterday was a pretty day, and Hudson's class got to go on the playground during school. Last night, Hudson had a t-ball game and he came up to me before the game and asked where I'd put his jeans he wore to school. I told him they were in the den where he had changed into his ball clothes. Good, he said, because he had picked me a dandelion on the playground and had put it in his pocket to bring home. Sweetness.

When we get home from the game, he goes to his pants and starts looking in all the pockets for this forgotten flower. It's not there. He starts to stress, so Randy goes to help him look for it. Still no sign of the flower. He turns to me and has tears welling up in his eyes ... I'm sorry, Momma. I had you a flower and I must have lost it. Full-blown crying sets in. I hold him in my arms and whisper to him how special he is and how good I feel knowing that he tried to bring me a flower. I thank him again for all the flowers he's brought me in the past (he loves to give flowers - picked or purchased). He sunk his head further into my neck, his face hot and wet from his sadness. Randy suggests that he can pick one just like it in our yard the next day. Nope, this won't do. Hudson declares that he wants to go out in our yard right then to get the replacement.

So, out they go -- Randy with his head-lamp on (it's after 8:00 at this point); Hudson wearing PJs and house shoes. They're gone. And gone. It's now been 15 minutes or so. I'm thinking they jumped in Randy's car and drove to the grocery to buy a bouquet. At about 20 minutes, the pair comes in the back door ... dandelion bud held tight in a five-year-old fist. Look Mom - we found one! He hugs my neck, and I fuss over this flower as if it were the bouquet handed to Miss America. I find a little bowl to float in it, and Hudson goes off to bed ... bouncing all the way, proud of his accomplishment.

I asked Randy what took so long. Apparently, our yard didn't have any that they could find (he had just mowed on Monday), so they had to keep going yard to yard to finally find one at an empty house half-way across the subdivision. Randy said Hudson was determined to come home with a flower - and it had to be just like the one picked earlier in the day.

What love. What beautiful love. It was about this time 6 years ago that we finished up our last round of infertility treatments ... all with negative results. In May of that year, God blessed us with the conception of our now almost-ready-for-Kindergarten boy ... who loves me so much. Thank you, Lord, for showing yourself to me though the blessing of little Hudson. I pray that he continues to have a heart for giving and loving others.

This morning, the bud had opened up into a full, yellow pom of beauty. I think the dandelion is now my favorite flower ... might just grow a yard full of them. You never know when one will be needed in the middle of the night!