Planted

Good Morning, American friends and family!  

Janet here.  I'm sitting at my kitchen table with a tall glass of iced green tea.  The victory in that is that I'm voluntarily sitting downstairs when I could be upstairs in air conditioning!  The temperatures still get pretty hot most days, but the morning is staying just slightly cooler long enough for my kitchen and living room to be pleasant after breakfast--as long as all the fans are on!  

I just looked up at my handy wall clock that also shows the temperature. Have any of you seen Good Morning, Vietnam recently?  We watched parts of it in preparation for coming here, and the jokes Robin Williams makes about the weather keep coming to mind.  At one point his superior officer is scolding him for not accurately reporting the weather--he simply says that IT'S HOT, with various colorful metaphors, instead of giving the temperature. The officer says, in a pinched voice, "It is two degrees cooler today."  Robin Williams replies, "And me without my muff!"  We are all meant to side with him in feeling like two degrees couldn't possibly make a difference when it's just so dang hot!  Well, the reason I bring this up is because this morning when I noticed that I was staying in the kitchen after breakfast rather than retreating to the upstairs, I looked over at the wall display and saw that it is "two degrees cooler than yesterday." 

We don't think the weather forecasting websites ever have an accurate story, though.  We've been promised thunderstorms every day this week, and we have yet to have one.  It's officially October now, so we say bring on the rainy season!

I actually didn't sit down to write about the weather, though.  I wanted to tell you about this plant.  When we were furnishing our house we were glad to find a second-hand furniture store.  This plant was there, having just received a rather short and uneven haircut.  Tim being Tim, he immediately bought it.  This was just a few days after he had bought a whole bunch of plants for the roof, and if Tim has ever paid full price for something and then sees it used at a bargain price, he will buy it again.  And how could you ever have too many plants, right?  So this plant was delivered along with our roof-top table and chairs.  When Tim started carrying it to the roof, he found out how heavy it was, and it only made it to the first landing of the first flight of stairs.  It didn't take long for us to realize that's exactly where it should be. All those concrete stairs needed some life on them!

Well, it has turned into something very meaningful to me.  I wish I had taken a picture of it when we first got it, but I didn't know it was going to become important.  You'll just have to imagine it--all of the light green new growth you can see wasn't there, so it was just a bunch of cut-off stems and a few mature stalks sticking out at odd angles.  It was probably on the stairs for two weeks or so before any new growth began to be visible.  I never get tired of seeing the beauty of new growth on plants.  It starts out just as a rim of bright green coming from the center of a small stalk, or maybe a tiny fuzzy lump on an otherwise dead looking branch.  The excitement of the potential waiting there is probably what makes gardening such a therapeutic and hopeful hobby.  I took a picture from above so you could see the angle that I see it as I come downstairs every morning.  It's been quite exciting to see those rims of green become tubes of green and then see the leaves beginning to fan out.  I really can see a change every day.  I don't often come downstairs already excited about a new day, but when I see that plant, and how it continues to grow every single day, I get a lift in my spirit and in my mood.

I had been observing this for several days when one morning as I looked at the plant, the words, "That plant is you," passed through my mind.  Again the next day: "That plant is you." You can't tell in English, but that is a plural "you."  That plant is us.  This thought persisted in my mind without embellishment for several more days before I really began to study its meaning.

A plant has been radically pruned and then moved to a new place.  There's shock, and awkwardness, and a new set of circumstances to get used to.  After an adjustment period, the plant draws from the life within itself and the nutrients around it and new growth appears.  The plant is still not balanced or evened out, but the potential in the new growth sections is so exciting that you don't mind that the whole plant isn't yet beautiful.  

I know you can see where I'm going with this.  We have definitely been pruned radically and moved to a new place.  But here's the thing: I don't feel like we're growing. I can see progress, of course, in how we've adjusted to the heat and the city, but it doesn't actually feel like personal growth.  It just still feels like we've totally messed with our lives and have ourselves to blame for the challenges we're in the middle of. I'm very aware of what I've done to my children.  When Daniel is sad because he's lonely and homesick, I know that I have deliberately done this to him.  When Anna pines for friends her age to talk to, I know I have deliberately done this to her.  When Michael is paralyzed by his sense of awkwardness, of not knowing how to do things and fearing being stared at, I know that I have deliberately done this to him.  I'm telling you, this is not easy to bear.

And yet...day after day I walk down my stairs and see that my plant is growing and I hear that still, small voice say, "That plant is you."  I believe Him.  The outward signs are not as clear, but as surely as that plant is experiencing new life, is becoming more beautiful, is daily moving forward, so are we.  Each one of us.