Athena and the Dandelions

Have you ever eaten a dandelion?

Me neither.

Have you ever blown dandelion seeds to make a wish?

Me, too.

“Time to go, Athena,” Mama said from the curb. She held open the car door.

I toed the sidewalk and swung my book. She knew I didn’t eat dandelions. Why did I have to pick them with my family every spring?

“Baba and Yia-yia are waiting,” she said.

My father and grandmother smiled from the front seats of the car.

I turned and waved to Brigid, the girl who’d moved in across the street.

She stood and watched. I was glad she didn’t ask where we were going.

We rode into the country, not too far from our house just outside Chicago. I set down my book and tilted my face to the warm breeze. I told the wind, “I hope we’re not there yet.”

I had never seen anyone in the field with us, but I always worried that someone would notice us picking dandelions. People in America yanked dandelions from their lawns. No one wanted them. What would the new neighbors think if they found out our family ate weeds? 

We drove west until the houses stopped. Then we stopped.

I wished Baba would turn the car around so we could go home.

I wished Mama wasn’t rummaging around the trunk for plastic grocery bags.

I wished Yia-yia didn’t pull out the supplies she kept in her purse.

“Ela exo, Athena,” Yia-yia said in Greek. “O helios thelee na se thee.” She was saying, “Come out. The sun wants to see you.”

I slunk from the car.

We walked through a vast field. Hundreds of spunky yellow flowers decorated the soft earth.

I looked for a place to hide.

“What’s the matter with you, Athena?” Yia-yia asked, bending over to shear a dandelion from the ground. She shoved it into a grocery bag and went on to the next victim, eyeing me all the while.

“Nothing,” I said. “But why do we eat dandelions? No one else does.”

“The best food in the world,” Baba answered, shaking a handful of greens.

It seemed to take hours to fill the bags. 

I longed to run through the dappled field. I wanted to twirl. I looked around. Only dandelions watched me.

I did a cartwheel. Legs straight, toes pointed. I landed smiling at the sky and shin-high in the yellow flowers.

“Athena!” Yia-yia said. “Ta horta!”

That meant not to trample the leaves. I sat down and burrowed into my book.

By the time we were ready to leave, we had enough dandelions to boil, oil, and douse with lemon for an entire Greek army. Wild greens, or horta, as we called them, were always on the menu. Chicken and horta. Lamb and horta. Red snapper and horta. Sometimes just horta for Baba.

On the way home, Mama and Yia-yia talked about hosting a dinner party for the new neighbors, who wanted to try ethnic food.

“What about spaghetti and meatballs?” I asked.

“That’s Italian,” Yia-yia said. “We’re Greek.”

“Fried rice?” I teased.

“Chinese,” she said.

The night of the party, Brigid from across the street arrived with her parents. 

Mama set the table with her gold-stamped glasses. She served octopus with onions, grilled sardines, peppers stuffed with lamb and rice, and horta.

Our guests ate everything. Brigid poked at the octopus with her fork.

“That’s octopus,” I said.

She tasted it.

She poked the sardines.

“Those are sardines,” I said.

She tried them.

Next came the horta.

“Wait!” I said. Too late. “You ate the dandelions!” I told her.

We both laughed, and she ate another bite. “Not bad,” she said.

Mama was smiling at us.

After dinner, Brigid and I went to the backyard and stretched out on the grass. The stars reminded me of dandelions in a soft field.

I closed my eyes and made a wish: to be as open-minded as my family and my new friend.