Blog Bits

I was sipping an iced tea at the coffee shop and researching online when she walked up. “Is your name Beard?” she asked. She looked familiar. After 37 years in the classroom, I’ve given up hope of remembering most names, but something in her eyes was familiar.

“Yes.”

She introduced herself, a former student who had graduated 20 years ago. We caught up briefly, and she said, “I wanted to tell you about something you said to me once.”

I tried not to tense visibly – this could be good or not. “I had turned in my homework,” she said, “and you gave it back and said it wasn’t good enough. I was thinking, ‘I did my homework, what do you want?’ But you went on and said, ‘You can do better than this. You have a lot of potential.’ I’ve never forgotten that.”

She smiled and repeated it. “You said I had a lot of potential. I’ve never forgotten that.”

I said, “Thank you” and added a few words that I hoped were appropriate.

She smiled again and left, and I sat for a few moments in awe of that moment of kindness.

This is what we’re meant to do, isn’t it? To remind each other that through all the imperfections, every now and then a moment shines through. Hold on them. Tell the happy story. Remind each other of the good things we do. (We don’t need reminders of the others. We do that on our own.)

I’m smiling now, just remembering. Wherever you are today, Heather, thank you.

Christmas cactus dies slowly, and I’ve spent the last several weeks apologizing to my overwatered mother plants and tucking shed fronds into dirt, hoping for the best. I have several little “nurseries” around the house in bright, indirect light. The graveyard of large, emptied cache pots, slowly growing, stares at me accusingly. Mea culpa.

This morning I checked on this little bowl. Three of the starts are not going to make it, but the fourth one has taken root. I almost cheered.

And I couldn’t help thinking that caring for plants – like caring for pets and raising a family – is a project of determined hope. When it looks like everything has gone wrong, we don’t give up: we start again. Underneath the destruction is something that wants to live.

We recognize that desire in ourselves, too. Something inside wants to grow roots and leaves, to absorb the light around us, and ultimately, to bloom. To make friends. To succeed at school or work or hobby. To build healthy relationships. To learn to live with loss. To recover. To take a break when we need to. To stop being afraid. To forgive and to accept forgiveness. To try something new.

So we figure out how to remove the bits that aren’t growing any more. We learn how to encourage new roots. We find the right combination of food and soil.

And from time to time, we decide to start over. A choice. A belief that life will not be denied, and our job is to support it.

My little bowl nursery doesn’t look like much now, but a year from now, I’ll be wondering if it’s time to repot.

(And for those who will hasten to tell me that this is not Christmas cactus but actually Thanksgiving cactus, hush. That’s not the point.)

Ivy is the shape-shifter of plants. It acts like it’s your friend, all pretty and green. It sends out new leaves now and then. It lets you brag on it; it even poses for pictures. But when it’s good and ready, that sucker will turn on you. Those verdant vines begin to thin. More water? More light? Plant food? It will scorn your offerings and laugh at your heartbreak as, leaf by leaf, it turns brown and reduces itself to barren sticks in a pretty cachepot.

It was an ancient florist speaking of ivy who first wrote, “Fool me once, shame on thee. Fool me twice, shame on me.”