When the Dandelions Sing

“Dear self,”
No. That just makes no sense at all. Writing a letter to my
much older self should not start off as “Dear self,” although,
well, I am writing to myself, technically. Kind of seems strange
to refer to me by my name, though, so maybe “Dear self”
works? Maybe I can just write it and use my given name.
“Dear Ronnie.”
Should I use my full name or is that too much? I do not want
my older self to think I was a dweeb for writing out my full
birth name, Ronnie Jefferson McFarland Jr. That would seem
as if I were trying to sound too grown up, and although I am
for my current age, that may be pushing my intelligence a
little. Not even I would believe it when I read it, to be honest.
Was I important enough to get away with that?
I could use my Grammy’s nickname for me. Jasper. It means
nothing, really. At least, I don’t think it does anyway, but when
I was a baby, she told my momma I did not look much like a
Ronnie to her. She was actually dumbfounded that Momma
had named me Ronnie, and not Ronald, or Donald, or something
that Ronnie would derive from. No, she just called me
Ronnie, which brings about another curious issue. How was
I Ronnie Jefferson McFarland Jr if my daddy’s name, as far
as I knew anyway, was not even Ronnie Sr.? So, Grammy told
my momma she was not going to be calling her grandson a
name that made no sense to her at all. Nope, I looked like a

Jasper to her, so she would call me Jasper, and that was that.
I liked Jasper. It was kind of a funny name, but still, it
did have a certain ring to it. When Grammy would call us
in to eat, she would just scream for my brother and sisters
by their own names, and then last, but not least, she would
scream, “Jasper! Get in here. Supper’s almost ready!” None
of my siblings had a special name like that. They had dumb
names like David and Janet and Thelma Louise. Nope, not
me. I was not ever going to be Ronnie to her. I was Jasper,
and that was perfectly fine by me. It set me apart because I
was clearly Grammy’s favorite. She would not tell me that,
but we all knew.
Davey teased me about it all the time, telling me Jasper
meant that Grammy thought I was stupid, or that because I
did not have a “real” first name like they did, that she made
that one up because she figured any foolish name would do.
He said she just found it while she was in town one day and
some guys were teasing each other, calling themselves Jaspers.
I knew better, though. Grammy, even when hollering at us
all for whatever dumb thing we had done, would wink at
me afterward, when the others were too busy getting upset
or washing up. She never admitted to it, though. I asked her
once about that and she told me I was acting a fool, that she
had not winked, not ever. Not even once. I felt like maybe I
had imagined the winking incidents, but the next time we got
in trouble for coming in late, all muddy and tracking dirt in
the house and onto her gleaming, freshly mopped hardwood
flooring, she winked again. She did not smile when she did,
though. She just winked, showing the long lines around her

eye, and looked away. I knew she did that because I was her
Jasper. I was certainly different from the others. The youngest
of all the grandkids, and I had the strangest first name to her.
So, she took a different liking to me for sure. I just knew it.
Back to my pending letter, though. This is harder than I
anticipated. I am trying to write a letter to my much older,
hopefully, more mature self, because I want to remember the
events unfolding here and now. This would be a moment in
my life I surely would need to document, so I would never
forget it, and I did not even know how to address myself in the
letter. If you cannot address yourself properly in a letter, you
simply cannot write the letter. Otherwise, it is just a letter to
basically anyone. What if I forgot I wrote this letter, and my
future older self, found it and forgot who wrote it and why?
Maybe I would just crumple it up in my hands, throw it away
in a wastebasket and not read it at all, because there was no
name to start it off. It was a major problem I had before me
for sure. A big dilemma for me, so I asked Davey for advice.
“Hey, Davey, how do you write a letter to yourself without
sounding all stupid and such?”
“You don’t,” Davey replied quickly. “Who writes a letter
to themselves, anyway? That makes literally no sense at all. I
mean, you are right here. Just tell yourself what you need to
tell, yourself,” as he chuckled at me with his response in jest.
“Oh, and what did I tell you! It is not Davey. It is David.
I am not like you at all, having a stupid first name that isn’t
even formal. That’s not even normal. I have a formal first
name. It is David. D A V I D. Say it, David.”
Momma always said Davey was mad when I was born. He

had been the baby of the family, and having two older sisters,
he felt he had it made in the shade. He could do whatever he
wanted because the sisters loved playing with him like he was
a real-life doll baby of theirs. I would laugh and tell Momma
he still looked and acted like a doll baby, and she would tell
me to knock it off with her smile and say, “A little he does,
doesn’t he?” She knew I was kidding, but it was all I had to
get Davey back with. He was exceedingly stronger than me, a
great deal smarter than me, and well, he did not like me much.
I wanted to play with him all the time, but he just did not see
the fun in doing that. He had his friends, and they always ran
as fast as they could when I would try to tag along behind.
I kept trying, figuring one day my legs would just magically
shift faster back and forth, just fast enough to catch them,
and they would be surprised and let me play just because of
that. It never happened though, despite my trying over and
over. I did not want to give up until they let me play. I was
determined. But the faster I got, the faster they seemed to get.
“Okay, Davey, I’m sorry. I just wanted to know, you know,
how you would write a letter to someone, like if you had to
write one to yourself for school, how would you start it off?
That’s all I was asking,” I said, not wanting to sound foolish.
Davey looked at me, with the slight grin he always looked
at me with, tied his tie around his neck as properly as he could,
and rolled his eyes upwards into the back of his head, and
shook it. He would not be of any help, I could clearly see, so
I needed to ask someone else. Maybe Janet would be able to
help me better. She was smart, 15 years old, and she liked me
even though we were 7 years different in age and had literally

nothing in common. She was a quiet, slender figured girl with
long, straight, dirty blonde hair that fell naturally to the floor,
and it was always neat, sometimes tightly braided in the back,
but never on the sides.
Janet was in her bedroom, which was at the top of the
stairs, where there once had been an old dusty attic. Grammy
and Grandad had turned that dark space into a bedroom
when we all moved in. The room had low curved ceilings on
the outsides because the roof was there just on top, but you
certainly could walk down the middle, and on each side were
daybeds—one for Janet and the other for Thelma Louise.
Janet always had to have the left side. She was the only one
of us who was left-handed, and she favored anything to that
side for some odd reason. She always felt the need to sit on
the left side of the car, she ate on the left side of the booth
in Roxy’s Diner when we went into town on Sundays for
Church, and she would always pick something up from the
ground below her, from her left side. Even if she had to turn
completely around, she would pick things up with her left
hand only, but people didn’t really say much to her about it,
because it was causing no harm, as Momma told me, and she
would eventually just outgrow it, she figured.
“Janet, can you help me with this, please? I want to write
a letter to myself, well, my older self to be exact, and I do not
know how to address myself, my older self. How would you
address you if you were writing a letter to your older self so
that you knew when you read it later, it was from you, to you?”
Janet looked at me, made a short-drawn smile, and shook
her head, as if to say, what on earth are you talking about,

Ronnie, but it was not to be mean at all. She really tried to
understand me as best she could with the age difference and
all, and I always tried to explain things to her the best I could,
but I was only 8 so it did not always come out right. Plus, I
talked super-fast when I was excited and felt the need to get
it out right away. Sometimes even quicker than my mouth
could get the words out, and I stumbled over them, so my
thoughts were all jumbled as they left my lips. I wanted to
just get everything out before I forgot it, so I tried my best to
do just that. She knew that and would always tell me to slow
down some. To take a deep breath. That I would remember the
important parts, and that would be enough. She was right, but
they were ALL important parts to me. I genuinely had a lot
to say, but now I just needed an answer to my letter problem
so I could continue with the meat of the letter. I had not even
written any words at all, because I had no idea how to start it.
“Ronnie, just start it by saying, dear Ronnie. That way,
you will know it is meant for you, and you will be using
your name, which I have never met another Ronnie. No one
will confuse you with, well, you. You do not need to write
out your full name. Where are you going to put the letter
anyway?” she asked.
I had not even thought about that. Where would I put this
letter so that no one would get to it before I did? Plus, it had
to be in a spot that no one would find it for a long time. I
wanted to make sure I only read this when I was old enough
to understand, and who knew when that would be. Plus, I
had to remember that I wrote the letter in the first place.
That was another perplexing problem altogether. How could

I open it and read it if I did not even remember where I had
hidden it years before? It had created more problems asking
a simple, basic question, and now I was getting frustrated all
over again. It was already a sad day, but I was trying to be
strong and just get things together in time and write this one
letter to myself before we left.
The letter would just need to wait. It was time to get going,
and the car was pulling up and outside now, waiting for us.
The ride was not a short one, so I had plenty of time to think
about the letter and how to address it perfectly. Plus, I now
needed to find a place to hide the letter, where no one would
find it, but myself when I was old enough to understand. The
trip would provide me with plenty of time, I thought. I could
figure this out, and then when we were done, come back
home and sit back down at the dining table, and write my
letter out. I had to go now, so that would just need to wait a
little bit longer.

Chapter 1
The Birth of Ronnie
* * *
Because of the rapidly accumulating snow laying
softly on the roads in town, Momma had to be
particularly careful driving herself to the emergency
room after her water broke while carrying me. She was
working at Roxy’s Diner part-time, while going to school
to learn how to do important office work, or something
like that. She said she needed to educate herself on how to
file important time-sensitive petitions (whatever those are),
how to talk with people on the phone who were always
demanding and screaming, and how to handle others in
suits who had come from better backgrounds than any of
us had. She knew that if she worked hard enough and was
dedicated to what it was she wanted to do, we could all
grow up to wear suits one day too and be just as important
as those folks were.
Momma was always working towards something better.
A way to get all her kids dressed well for their jobs, so
she could in time look back on her hard work and know

all those long hours of studying and working late, was
for good reason. She did not want the same old same old
over and over anymore. She wanted to break the recurring
chain, she said, and give us a better chance at life. Plus,
she figured at least one of her kids would succeed enough
to take care of her, when she grew old, frail, and tired and
needed to retire. She was always talking about retiring. I
had no idea what any of that meant, but I knew I wanted
to give her that one day. I would be the one making all
the money, telling people what to do and they would have
to listen to me, and Momma would be so proud of me, as
she sat, retired, drinking lemonade on her front porch. I do
not know what else she would be doing while retiring, but
I wanted to do that for her because it is what she wanted.
The time was not right for my arrival though. She was
only 34 weeks pregnant and I was coming before she had
a chance to prepare all the other children at home. When
she left that afternoon, just after her classes finished for
the day, she figured she had a few more weeks left in her to
work the diner, and finish out her semester at school, with
plenty of time to have me and then get back to class and
work. I was not having it, as Grammy would say. When I
wanted something, I was persistent. This was just the start
of my persistence, apparently. The world was a big, beautiful
place, full of curious wonders, attractive dancing colors
bouncing around, and riveting sounds. These were things I
just had to know about. So, I was being my impatient self,
and broke Momma’s water so I could come out and see all
the things I needed to.

Because the diner was packed, being that it was supper
time, and guys and girls were just finishing work at the
nearby steel plant, Stapleton Brothers Steel Works, Momma
told her boss she would just drive herself. This was her
fourth baby, and she was fine enough to know she had
plenty of time to get to the county hospital on the other side
of town, have me, and be home by the following evening,
resting in bed. Besides, they were short-staffed as it was.
The snow was falling hard, and the other waitresses did
not have four-wheel drive, so getting in was not a problem,
but getting home would be an entirely different story.
Momma had a faded Orange Scout with a white stripe a
third of the way up, so she could get around just about
anywhere she needed to. The driver side door would stick
more often than not, so she would need to either crawl
through the window or open the passenger side and crawl
across the seat, over the center console, and into the driver
seat. It was winter, so the driver side window was naturally
up already. This made it so she would need to open the
passenger side door, pull herself up to the seat, slide across
the hard, freezing, cracked black leather, over the center
console, and pull her body under the steering wheel so she
could start the Scout and drive.