The windy day and the yellow crown

The children paraded around the nursery school in an effort to drive winter away and welcome in spring. It didn’t work. Nevertheless, they each got a crown.

The day was warm-ish, not too cold, not too snowy, not too too. Except for the wind. The wind moved through the top of the fir trees, swaying the branches, starting small and then growing into a roar.

Mom pushed the baby in the carriage to pick up her boy, who was wearing a yellow crown. They talked over the roar of the wind about lions and parades and the coming spring, until they got home. Walking up the driveway, the mom discovered her boy wasn’t wearing his crown; the wind must have whisked it right off his head. Leaving the children in care of their grandmother, she ran off down the street. She searched and searched. It was a challenge as the utility company had just set out little yellow flags on neighbor’s lawns, marking where the gas pipelines were underground. Everywhere she saw fluttering yellow flags that caught her eye—but no yellow crown. She had almost walked the entire route back to school when she spotted the crown in the clutches of a scratchy bush. The crown was battered and bruised and a bit dirty. Still, she retrieved it and dashed home.

Whereupon the children were eating lunch and entirely ignorant of the ordeal their mother had gone through to bring back the crown. In fact, the little boy was like—“Oh, it’s dirty.”

The mom, now out of breath from running, tossed the once beloved crown on the counter by the microwave by all the junk mail.

Where it sits to this day.