There is More To Admire Than to Despise

I almost want to hear something explode. Instead, I hear a hollow distant air in this usually bustling Manhattan neighborhood. But the quiet is not peace, because I know that everything is coming apart. Fear is ravenously enveloping us, while a profound despair slowly descends. It’s like an invisible storm that will steal our months, our work, our loved ones, and even ourselves. It is a darkness we have had the privilege to never know. We have read books about trying times—wars, diseases, heartaches—only to put the book down and have another cookie. Only now, we cannot put the book down, and there are no cookies left because we ate them all yesterday.

As recent as the beginning of last week, we were collectively innocent, going about our days sighing, joking, complaining, loving. Taking for granted the daily workings of our normal little lives. Now, the only thing most of us can do is stay inside and go on existing, puttering around our homes pretending the world as-we-knew-it is not ending.

So, in an effort to extract out the particulates of hope, here’s to the simple things that bring a new kind of joy now:

Here’s to the glorious morning sunshine which resets us to the mode of irrational hope, to the hard wringing of the mop, to very long warm showers and voraciously blooming houseplants. To the rising dough, and the swirl of milk in our teas and coffees. To music, which is almost as good as the sun. Here’s to the dust which gave me something to clean for days, to the recipes that rose from the dead, to my oven that works despite years of neglect, to the half-read books calling around me, to the friends that always make me laugh. Hell, here’s to lying awake at night with anxious half-headed epiphanies. Here’s to the 7 lemons I am hoarding in my fridge to make things seem fresh, even when they are canned. Here’s to the birds that chirp and fly around without knowing anything of the darkness. Here’s to email and FaceTime and texting and social media. Here’s to all the Words-With-Friends games I am losing. Here’s to hand soap and hummus and the many hugs that will come again some day. I love it all, with a new kind of love which is standing just as tall as pain.

“What we learn in time of pestilence: there are more things to admire in people than to despise” -- Albert Camus, “The Plague”

I Aloe New York

It sat at the back of the design studio, just after the row of computers but before the kitchen. Right were it could be ignored most. It was as dry as a tumbleweed, but it never went anywhere. I always assumed someone else was taking care of it. Everyone thought that.

This large and leggy light green aloe plant was crunchy dry dead-as-a-doornail in the center, but miraculously green and turgid at the tips. It grew in a way where it threw out little versions of itself fully formed, but separate. It was not one plant. It was a collective. And it never seemed to really need the soil very much.

I worked in this design studio for six years. With the plant. It was my first real job out of college. And because of that, and my particular personality, my coworkers became like a surrogate family for me. And we all ignored the plant together. Over coffee.

At some point I became interested in something else entirely. I didn’t leave design right away, but I started volunteering at a genetics lab. One day I brought a small piece of the aloe plant to the lab. My scientist boss and I spread out newspaper on the ground and repotted this smaller piece in a very large pot. It had a lot of room, which signaled the great hope we had for it. And grow it did. It flourished and multiplied and practically burst into song. It eventually outgrew the pot. I haven’t seen it in many years now. But I still wonder how it is doing.

After the lab, I worked at a museum. When I first started working at the museum I remember telling people that I wanted to bring in a piece of my aloe to keep us company. to give us something living and green around us. But I never had an office with a window. And I never quite had the time, or the heart, to bring it there then. So I didn’t.

I also brought many pieces of the plant home and today they are still growing in 5 different pots in my kitchen. I have given pieces to dear friends. One friend broke it while traveling back on the subway with it. Another friend had a too curious cat so she moved it far away from him. One piece is even making the best of it in Boston and growing steadily at a friend’s home there. It is the epitome of resilient, but it isn’t terribly attractive. And sometimes its sections grow awkwardly like several offset green hands with more than five fingers. It takes well to neglect. And it never asks for anything. ever.

The building where the design studio was located has just been sold. Everyone we love is moving out or already gone. I went back this week—almost 20 years after I started working there—to say goodbye. I looked for the plant. I asked about the plant. It was nowhere to be found. And no one knew or recalled absolutely anything about it. If I didn’t have the evidence still growing in my kitchen I may have wondered if it ever even existed.

I love this plant as a symbol of growth, of movement, of resilience and for being a backdrop to continuous professional and personal change. It is a living trail of human connections, and many little green futures. Where will it grow next I wonder?