Stargazer pollen
When TinyHuman was much younger, 4 or 5, my friend M was visiting for a casual social chat. As we talked, TinyHuman approached a few stargazer lilies (one of my favourite flowers) that I had in a vase and was lightly playing with them. She wasn’t hurting them, but she was disturbing the anther - the pollen-coated bits at the ends of the filament.
I asked her to stop, then went over to show her: the pollen is dark orange, and if she touched it, it would get on her fingers and could be spread to her clothes, or the white walls of our rented flat. And if they fell off, or the pollen was knocked off, it would stain the light-coloured carpet. I grabbed a tissue and explained that we could pull off the anther bits, and then not only would they not be in danger of dying things orange, but the flowers would last longer so we could enjoy them more.
We looked at how orange the tissue was in the places that had touched the pollen, tossed it in the trash, and she went back to smelling the lilies and I went back to my friend.
I found my friend in tears. She explained that she had never been parented the way that I had just interacted with TinyHuman, and it wasn’t until she saw it modeled that she realized that it could have been different, and she was both sad for her younger self and happy for TinyHuman and me, that we could have that sort of loving and nurturing experience together.
I think about that. A lot.
