A portrait of indoor ecosystems and inner existentialism.
By Shanley Smith
December 18
Cabin fever has crawled into everyone’s roots. My Chinese lantern longs for more sunlight. The draft by the slider door shocked the peace lily. A few plants have gone completely kaput: namely the sun-hungry succulents. Despite modern temperature control, my indoor ecosystem cannot disconnect from the frost that has already nipped the external environment. Meanwhile, I approach month eleven of the Covid-19 pandemic.
I harvest every stratagem to combat the season’s adversities: neem oil, fertilizer, trimming, repotting; masks, hand-sanitizer, social distancing. They say plants aid in a stronger psyche. They ward off depression and despondency. Something about taking care of another life. I think of the dog I walked when I lived in Romania, how he warded off the anxiety attacks. How, if only for the duration of our hike, he’d still nip panic that threatened to pounce on me.
Perhaps with plants it’s less the companionship, more the satisfaction of witnessing growth and change. But what of winter’s arrival? What of witnessing their waning?
I wasn’t a believer in signs or omens, at least not until I bought my fig tree. Two years ago I acquired a Chicago Hardy Fig. Since then we’ve fallen into a sort of codependency. She looks to me for sustenance, and I look to her for inspiration. Mother and muse. It’s hard to declare which status supersedes. I call her Carica, after the tree’s Latin name. Carica, coming from Car, ruler of Caria. King Car, who invented the practice of Augury. Car, who chose a river’s daughter as his mistress. With such a namesake, I no longer wonder why Carica’s behaviors transfix me.
This past month my Carica retired into an ongoing state of dormancy. Perhaps she has caught my fatigue after nearly a year of combating the hellstorm of 2020. The pear-hued tips of her new shoots still indicate the promise of chlorophyll, but the ends remain locked tight.
The last ten months seems to play prelude to this moment. In winter she struggled to shudder off spider mites. At the time I lived in Romania. I had left her in the hands of my mother. A woman capable of raising a child as sensitive as myself, I assumed, could surely tend to this wanting tree.
In March, I reunited with Carica. I arrived in America spun and spit out after two months in Romania. February and March were spent on tumble dry with culture-shock, seasonal depression, and pandemic isolation. Yet when I read the email that mandated return to my home country, I wanted nothing more than to dig my feet firmer into the mountain soil, the river’s peat, my apartment’s concrete flooring: whatever ground would take me.
Instead, I boarded a plane, which returned me to Ottawa County. There, Carica had spent the past month healing. Few leaves held any trace of scars. Her limbs showcased bundles in good posture. In short, she appeared healthy.
Scientists have conducted research studies: when plants hear music or words of affirmation: they grow at increased speeds. When I arrived, I couldn’t provide Carica the latter. I’d like to put forth a scientific question. What happens to a plant's growth when she falls asleep to the sound of her caretaker in mourning?
Perhaps, like the great Persephone, her spirit was whisked away for the winter. In this way, perhaps she is also like me. Or perhaps, in regard to the scientific question, she has absorbed my grief.
In previous winters Carica has unfurled new leaves, despite the subpar heating of 2018 and the mite infestation of 2019. Two years ago she even offered figs. This year she has settled for a full blown retreat. The buds haven’t swelled, making me wonder if she’s petrified herself. She’s 5’10” now; taking care of such lengths requires a good portion of energy. Maybe she lacks proper sunlight. Perhaps, like the great Persephone, her spirit was whisked away for the winter. In this way, perhaps she is also like me. Or perhaps, in regard to the scientific question, she has absorbed my grief.
Winter solstice sits three days away. Such deadlines harbor new importance amidst a year that offers little sense of time and routine. This year the scientists promise us something magnificent. They name it the Great Conjunction of 2020, which sounds like the grand finale to a year of apocalyptic drum rolling. Instead, it means Jupiter and Saturn will overlap for an evening and then continue on with their normal programming. For that long night they’ll broadcast an illusion akin to the star of Bethlehem. “The Great Conjunction of 2020,” they tell us. But all my body feels are the days growing shorter. It knows nearly nothing of stars. Nor does my fig tree. We know only the sun and miss it dearly.
December 21
Winter solstice arrives. The shortest day of the year grows even stouter, as dark clouds pitch out the daylight. I can hardly distinguish altostratus from night’s arrival. The covering remains and cloaks the great conjunction. Perhaps tomorrow, the skies will grant us a glimpse of the aftermath.
Today we witness no miracle, outside the impending promise of daylight’s improved elasticity. The shortest day passes. And in the day’s passing, Carica and I are offered the only miracle we need: from here on out, daylight starts to increase.
December 22
As I make the rounds with the water pitcher, I offer Carica a small drink. We’re rationing moisture levels to slow her soil’s fungal growth. She accepts the modest dose and drinks the soil dry by evening. I analyze her structure, for fear she’ll begin to dull her green. But I note the contrary. Her buds have swollen. At least three of her shoots hold freshly plumped tips. At this stage they won’t stay folded long. The bundles that once seemed locked tight, have now loosened. Within days she’ll offer new leaves. The potential is incontestable to eyes who have paid witness to her wane and wax. As if somehow, she sensed the sun’s shift–even today’s fraction of extra daylight–she’s chosen to unfurl again.
December 23
My husband and I depart for Virginia, for family. We pass the hours daydreaming about my father-in-law’s cooking, and humor ourselves over imagined feuds that will emerge in card play.
I’ve left my fig tree in the care of someone else’s hands again. It seems almost indecent that a near stranger should see her at her most intimate: her peach-fuzz leaves, colored in an infant shade of chartreuse.
While passing through Pittsburg, we receive a call. A man from a work meeting, the one who promised us he’d taken a test, the one said “it’s just a cold,” the one who coughed throughout the entire meeting: the man has covid.
In March on the trek back from Romania, we surmised about how many cases we brushed against. At work, we often wonder how many customers have contracted it. But here the distance presents itself undeniably. The virus has indeed passed us–over or through we do not know.
We turn the car around and drive home.
December 24
I wake on Christmas Eve to my husband’s wide eyes. They are filled with hope’s half-blighted harvest. This marks our first Christmas together, our first Christmas without our families, and our first Christmas as a family. It follows suit with the year: a chain of disrupted traditions. For some: no more sporting events, days at the office, proms, funerals, graduations, international vacations. For others: no more slow days at the hospital, no more hugs, no more chatter in the houses, no more holidays with a loved-one lost to the virus. For two burgeoning expats, booted back to the States at the start of the pandemic: no more Romania; no more hikes with our dog through the Carpathian mountains; no more routines at the gym or market; and now because of a foolish mistake… no Christmas.
We pour the coffee. We cook oatmeal and dash it with Christmas sprinkles. What will today hold? Then I notice her in the corner standing in quiet pride. She showcases three leaves, each no larger than a dime.
December 26
The first leaf to emerge has now grown to fifty-cent-piece size. Marc and I can still smell the coffee. Today marks when symptoms should emerge. The solitude closes in on us, perhaps the virus is too without our knowing yet.
December 27
We depart from our house at 11:30 and venture out toward the hospital. We take the test, drive home, and wait.
The leaves continue to grow. More buds sprout. Eleven leaves, according to my latest count. I’m looking toward Carica, her rebound. I’ve spent the past month in another bout of depression. A bout... what an expression, as in roundabout; as in: a go-around, game, match. As in my fig tree’s spar against the fungal gnats. As in the wrestling matches with our dog before his bath. As in a string of moments that shall pass and return and yet again pass.
December 30
I’ve stopped counting and measuring Carica’s leaves. Translation: I’ve stopped mothering. Now I wait for the muse to cast her spell on me. Is that how it works? I’m not sure how muses capture their artists. Is it the heart or mind they seize?
My husband and I depart for an overnight in the national forest to celebrate our results. “Negative. Covid-19 not detected,” my test reads.
I do not worry over Carica’s well being. Her leaves have remained lifted for nearly a week. None have patina-ed. Go to the woods, I imagine her voice toned like a daughter who knows her mother needs a loosening of strings.
In the woods, we only tighten our laces. We tromp through the snow, pulling up fresh powder to reveal our footprints. Post-holing. A trod that strains the calves, that feels endless, that takes more effort–though at a glance, we’re still just walking. How timely: A day spent putting effort into an everyday feat. And yet here, this parallel seems downright holy. In a territory just outside of civilization’s breach, the snow swallows even the sounds of nature. Somewhere, not too far from here, a fig tree sprouts another leaf. Somewhere farther, a dog runs through Romania’s hills, still abiding by his old owners’ routes and routines. And somewhere, at the end of these footsteps, a woman manages–amidst the silence, amidst the winter, amidst the year’s end–to pull her feet from the snow and plunge them back again and again. Step by step she re-forges the path along the Manistee River.
Icicles form on the branch tips of northern white cedars, bent over the waters. I think of King Car seducing the river’s daughter. As if a human could ever. Though I’d argue a tree might. Perhaps Carica or Arborvitae (the northern white cedar) could seduce a river to play their lovers.
Here the muses flaunt their power even in the grip of winter. Even as the ice forms, they still bend to meet the river...
The snow steals the sound of breath, of effort and leaves witnesses with the traces: a set of footprints; or, if they pay careful attention: a set of muses slowly swooning over the River. Here the muses flaunt their power even in the grip of winter. Even as the ice forms, they still bend to meet the river for they know the days are only lengthening. Because the weight of ice pulling toward the Manistee is the closest to an embrace the cedar will have with her. For when it all melts the time comes for work, fruit, production. By spring’s end the cedars must offer its fruit to the whole forest, not just the river. Winter... the arboreal muse’s only chance for rest, love, leisure.
The footprints end at a bench, overlooking a lake. The woman’s body, warmed from five miles, has time to sit before the sweat chills against her skin. She pauses, watches the clouds of breath that she can’t hear. In a matter of minutes she falls in love with the water, the trees, the snow burdened branches. The days will only get longer, she recognizes. The seasons of fruit and harvest edge closer. And so she releases herself to leisure just as the chill arrives. The water, the snow, the arborvitae have chosen her for this brief moment. How could one deny such an invitation? Her cheeks start to stiffen, but she waits at the bench a while longer and returns her presence to the lake: her fleeting muse, her new companion.
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