Heroes Not Zombies

This is one of my all time favourite photos.

I’ve taken lots of photos of seed heads over the years. I’m repeatedly drawn to them. The earliest ones I remember would be dandelions in the garden. I expect as a child you too played the game of blowing a dandelion seed head and counting how many puffs it took to send every single seed flying.

We called them “dandelion clocks” and the idea was that the number of puffs told you what time it was. I always thought that completely odd. I mean it was so easy to manipulate by varying the strengths of your puffs. You could prove the “dandelion clock” right or wrong depending on what you believed.

I know there are other traditions associated with the dandelions but, actually, I just preferred to look at them, and as I got older, photograph some of them.

This particular photo stands out from the rest because I was lucky enough to catch the moment that a single seed set off on its journey.

This still makes me of think of both the time in my life where I left home to go to university, and the times where my children left home to set up their own homes.

So it’s a poignant photo. It stirs in me that mix of emotions common to most parents – when their child reaches the time to leave home and step into adulthood. It’s a moment that, at best, feels right, feels natural, feels like the witnessing of maturation. I’m reminded of the passages in Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet”

You are the bows from which your children
As living arrows are sent forth
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite
And he bends you with his mightThat his arrows may go swift and far
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness
For even as he loves the arrow that flies
So he loves also the bow that is stable

It’s also a moment of anxiety and trepidation. Are they going to be ok? How am I going to protect them?

And a moment of sadness and loss, a realisation that their childhood is over, the little birds have flown.

Fundamentally however, this image stirs a sense of awe and wonder in me. I am yet again astonished and delighted by the beauty of Life.