Wolfgang Christian Larsen's
Amazing Four-Leaf Clover
Three-year-old Wolfy
with his fabulous
four-leaf clover
found April 27, 2007
All my life I have been intrigued by clovers, all clovers, three-leaf shamrocks as well as the more famous and desirable four-leaf clover -- closely akin to finding the end of a rainbow, regardless of golden pot, or spotting a white unicorn in a leafy glade, except that, of course, you actually CAN find a four-leaf clover. Um, well, that's the theory anyway. As for me (me, me ME, does it always have to be about ME?) I have searched for the elusive four-leaf clover all my life (and I'm just about 45, so that's saying something) without luck (it's a catch 22, you aren't lucky until you find your four-leaf clover, and you need a lot of luck to find one). Growing up in Quartz Hill, California, we had a lawn strewn with clusters of clovers, green clovers, and I spent literal hours every summer sitting in the grass, sifting through the clover, sometimes clover by clover, never finding my four-leaf gift. In fact, I never knew anyone that had found one, unless they just never told me.
Flish-flash forward a whole bunch of years, and I STILL have not found a four-leaf clover, even going so far as to spend over a 100 bucks to plant fields of clover all about my house (not for the four-leaf, of course, just for the whole clover aspect of it, but still, the four-leaf clover would be NICE), and have done many things to entice the wee folk to aid me in searching for my elusive four-leaf clover (the wee folk are my kids, not leprechauns or fairies, although they are quite a bit like fanciful creatures, my wee folk). Bronte and Dirklan, who are quite accomplished at counting, keep bringing me three-leaf shamrock after three-leaf shamrock.Bronte, my cherished daughter, six years old, and Dirklan, golden son, four years old, just don't seem to have the talent for finding four-leaf clovers. Or the luck. They must have got that from me, poor bairns. And Wolfgang, beautiful son of my ancient days, just wasn't interested.Over and over I kept repeating to my two kiddies who should have known better that "NO, this is a three-leaf clover, SEE? One, uh-two, and uh-THREE. There is no Number FOUR. That is what we are interested in, the fourth leaf, which in fact would make it a FOUR-LEAF CLOVER." All this said with kindly, loving patience, mind you. Okay, so I was yanking my hair out by the fistfuls and plucking my beard before their terrified eyes. But over and over again the litany: "One, Two, THREE. Nope, so sad, your dad."Then Wolfy comes over with two clovers in his paw and says grinning: "Papa? Is this a four-leaf clover?"I say to Carolena, my missus, "See? How many times do I have to do this? Wolfy didn't even look at the clover, he just randomly plucked a bunch."But in clover hunting, one of the big tricks that befalls your poor weary eyeballs is that clovers often DO clump together, and so two three-leaf clovers often appear to be one gazillion-leaf clover. Sheesh."No Wolfy," says I, "See? You have TWO clovers here, and look, you have to count the leaves. One, two, and uh-THREE. That's called a three-leaf clover, and we have millions and millions of them, we could feed the proverbial cattle on a thousand hills with the three-leaf clovers we got, and so," continues I, throwing away the three-leaf clover with utter disdain, "we don't care so much about three-leaf clovers."Wolfy just stands there smiling his utterly sweet smile. The urchin. Ragamuffin. Did I ever mention his sweet smile? It is cherubic, even though he is not fat, although now that you mention it, how in the world did Renaissance painters conceive the notion that cherubs, angels that stand before God Himself, would be fat little midget babies? But I digress. Wolfy's smile, it is utterly sweet, and one of the sweetest smiles I've ever seen, reminding me muchly of my elder son's smile when he was but a babe (this was before he became the inspiration for the "Chainsaw Massacre" movies) (but me own darling Harri DID have a pure and sweet smile).Okay, I moved onto the second clover Wolfy had brought me. And, speaking ultra condescendingly, I sneered: "And see Wolfy? You have to LOOK, you have to COUNT. Don't just yank up King Kong-sized pawfuls of clover, okay? See? One. You count the clover, Wolfy. That was the first leaf. Then we move on to the second leaf: TWO. If we stopped there, we'd have a two-leaf clover, and nobody likes those babies, it means bugs have gobbled up the other leaves, some of them which might have added up to the required four leaves of a four-leaf clover, Wolfy, are you paying attention."I glance over to my adored and ever-adoring wife Carolena, to see if she is sufficiently impressed with my grandiose oration, one I thought even the remarkable D. James Kennedy would have been sufficiently impressed by, but my adoring wife Carolena's eyes have gone all detached, and I can tell she's dreaming about making her famous Disappearing Oatmeal Cookies with raisins, and she is practicing what all wives do for all husbands, she is tuning my cantankerous words out of her very existence. So I turn back to Wolfy, who is watching me with raised eyebrows, sweet smile never diminishing (of course, he is three years old -- if he were say seventeen or so, he would have kicked me forcefully between the legs by this time)."Where were we, Wolfy?" says I."TWO!" shouts he, with glee, so forcefully, eagerly, purely, sensitively, with not a thought for cookies or pastries such as Sarah Lee (or is it Sara Leigh, um, okay, so I'm a man)."And here," says I, not quite sarcastically, "comes Number THREE. See, Wolfy? You brought me a three-leaf clover. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?""FOUR," says he, my own darling bonny lad, Wolfgang Christian Larsen. Did I mention the sweet smile? Suddenly, it almost seems devilish in its triumph (uh oh, a grim foreshadowing of Harrison II?).Because there, THERE, there there there is the mythical FOURTH LEAF. Wolfy, out of the blue, a shot in the dark, in a random act of kindness and almost blindness, has brought his ancient Papa a four-leaf clover. Mind you, Wolfy is three years old, and I, upon this day, am four-four years old. Wolfy has stooped down and without even checking, put his paw upon a four-leaf clover, something I have lusted for all my life long."Oh," I say, "Look what I just found? BOY, am I lucky.""Right," says me ever-adoring wife Carolena. "You're not going to get away with it. He just found a four-leaf clover, didn't he?"And he had, my lucky, lucky boy, he has found a four-leaf clover and brought it to me, and his sweet, sweet smile has never faltered even for a moment.Oddswise, I might have pointed to a field lined with stacks of hay, and said, "We'll NEVER find the needle hidden in one of those haystacks," and then Wolfy, of course, three years old, steps forward and says to his benevolent Papa: "Um, Papa, you mean THIS needle?"Next, The Tsunami of Clover.
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