One of These Days — Texas Bluebonnets and Buc-ees
Monica Dorame, Unsplash
Once a year in the storm-sprinkled, pre-heating oven that is Texas spring, piles of bluebonnets sprout. People travel for miles, states, countries, even, just to see them. After living in Dallas for about five years, my mom called me asking if I’d ever gone out for the famous Texas bluebonnets.
“I’ve heard they’re beautiful! Fields and fields of them,” she’d said.
In the heart of the city, there aren’t fields and fields of anything, much less delicate blue wildflowers. I mean, there is LoveFIELD, but that’s an airport. Any real, grassy, mother-nature field would be past the 635 loop, the freeway string that wraps around downtown as a sort of protective barrier against gunwielding rednecks and Texas-blonde women. Both of which are the kind of Christians who believe it’s blasphemous to say Jesus was anything other than white-skinned, blue-eyed, and staunchly American. I mean, that’s scary shit.
But if I’m willing to brave it, the bright side of leaving the careful confines of the 635 loop is that there are Buc’ee’s out there. The glorified gas station chain with clean restrooms, delightful pulled pork sandwiches, and a hardcore cult following. Justifiably so.
“One of these days, we’ll have to make it out there,” I said. “I just keep forgetting about it that time of year. And with work and life and everything, well… you know…”
The truth is, I didn’t really know what all the ‘everything’ was. Just… stuff, I guess.
“Well, one of these days,” she said.
‘One of these days’ popped up on a random-ass Monday. Decidedly the worst day of the week. Like 92.4% of Dallas drivers, I was going at a questionably quick pace down an odd main-ish road that cut two mismatched neighborhoods in half. A flash of blue caught my eye. I almost missed the sharp curve in the road, which would have sent me ironically careening into a “drive like your kids live here” sign.
Was that what I thought it was?
Right there, in the center median of this lame-ass middle-of-Dallas road was a Costco-pallet sized patch of bluebonnets.
I saw them only for a split second as I whizzed past.
But I saw them.
I definitely saw them.
Bonus points: I didn’t even have to brave the rednecks and uptight Christian ladies to see them!
I didn’t have to watch the calendar, or plan a roadtrip, or take a long lunchbreak.
They found me.
And I know that’s what people say about true love or God or stalkers, but it’s true.
There’s a great message in here from the universe: Don’t worry about making the effort, ’cause it’ll just happen.
Ha! Imagine that on a motivational poster.
DON’T WORRY ABOUT TRYING.
Big, white, capitalized text on a black poster with a stock image picture of a snow-capped mountain range, or a brand-new sunrise, or a cat hanging off a ledge.
That sounds like a nice life to live, doesn’t it? I mean, not if you’re a 3:00AM alarm freak with a green drink addiction, a stack of “master your mindset” books, and a daily LinkedIn post about pushing yourself even further today. A message about “not trying” would short circuit their brain and give them a grand mal heart attack.
I don’t make the rules.
Or maybe (back to the bluebonnets) the message is this: Grow in concrete medians.
Find ugly, dismal places that, in comparison, make you seem even better and more beautiful than you really are. Live in the middle of concrete. I mean, I already live in Dallas, so I’m a giant ol’ checkmark on having learned this life hack.
Or maybe growing in concrete is less about what it makes you look like, and more about your vantage point.
When I think about the greatest, most beautiful views in the world, I think of the snowy top of Mount Everest, or a sherbert-blushed tropical sunset. Basically, anything that would be on a motivational poster. But what would the view of a concrete-bound bluebonnet be?
Cars of all kinds would race past. All day, and all night. And for a split second, you could have a glimpse into another world. Perhaps a psychotic sports car driven by a snazzy finance bro who just closed a big deal. A full-size SUV with bag-eyed parents reminding themselves that they aren’t the enemies — the three snot-nosed monsters in the backseat are. A duct-taped-bumper junker of a freshly graduated dreamer who is blissfully unaware of the cost of being on their own healthcare insurance or paying taxes. Or the punk with the fresh cut leaning sideways as he flies by, blasting music that threatens to rattle the tires right off his souped-up ride.
Those bluebonnets in the concrete median can view instant lifetimes of humanity in seconds. The many worlds that exist from one person to the next. It seems sort of God-like. An omniscient, observant view of a person.
Perhaps.
Or maybe there is no message, no lesson.
Perhaps those bluebonnets fell there by happenstance. They sprouted and bloomed because that’s what they do. And for one split second, I got to enjoy them.
This story was originally published on my Medium.
