A friend received more flowers and plants than she could count upon her husband’s death. Both of them have earned the love of many, and people wanted to show their respect during the week of his funeral. Roses, mums, mixed bouquets, and baskets overflowing with potted plants littered the double parlor, so much so that mourners had to mind their step in the receiving line.
The following week, she came to me with a large basket in hand, “I’m terrible with plants, and I have more than I know what to do with. Do you want these?”
I received it gratefully and carried the basket home to repot the mix of houseplants inside. The florist had been quite generous in filling it to the brim, and I pulled seven plants from inside once it was all said and done. I carried a few to my office, including a small caladium, one of my favorite varietals.
I prefer to work in my home office, so I don’t spend many hours in the other, but I check in at least twice a week to pick up mail and make sure my plants are doing well. The caladium predictably has bent its stems toward the window, so I turn it to give all sides ample opportunity to photosynthesize. One of the others now has lovely yellow blooms and two new shoots. Whenever it flowers, I show my friend so she sees that her husband continues to brighten people’s days.
We tend to think ourselves superior to plants. We have legs to move us from place to place whenever we like, mouths to form words to communicate and brains to direct us. Plants serve us as decorations and atmosphere scrubbers. We consider them pitiful and stuck in the ground, trapped by their rootedness.
My caladium cares not what or even if I think of it. It does not grow angry at the small coffee cup-shaped planter that houses its roots. It gives little thought about the fact that I need to repot it to provide it with more space or that I disrupt its growth pattern whenever I rotate the cup 180 degrees. Instead, it turns its face to the sun to bask in the light it needs to live. It moves what it can, does what it can, and leaves off worrying about the rest.
How often do we find ourselves rooted in place, feeling powerless to change anything? Perhaps an illness fells us or an injury, something that physically plants us in one place for a while. Or the riverbed of life has carried us into an eddy, and we swirl in circles, unable to launch ourselves free. Still, other times, we become mired in emotional or mental distress, unable to move not for physical reasons but ones that live only in our minds.
The temptation befalls us to lament our unmovable state. When my body and mind misalign, and I realize hours have passed without any change, I opt for self-loathing and shame, deciding it must be a moral failing on my part that kept me in place for too long, stopping me from productivity. We let our heads hang down in self-pity, self-flagellation, or resignation.
Truthfully, no matter our state, we have the option of the caladium: to turn our faces toward the sun, claiming the one power we retain despite our physical or metaphorical rootedness. These last few days, the sun has provided a foretaste of the spring ahead and has lifted my spirits with its morning rising. I turned my face into it and, an hour later, found my cheeks rosy and warm again – the first time in months.
We have people in our lives who carry the light. We have windows around or paths outside. Books litter our landscape, offering words of encouragement and warmth. Even social media has a decent offering if we take the time to turn our eyes away from the political hellscape to cast our gaze toward bearers of motivation, truth, and illumination.
Even in our most powerless and frustrated states, in those moments when we find ourselves mired in the grime and disappointments of this world, crushing heartbreak, or physical infirmity, we retain the right to turn our faces towards the sun. She waits in the skies for us or in the souls of our loved ones, ready to feed us whenever we’re ready.