Marissa
She was not Marissa in those days. She was ‘a plant’ to keep alive.
Marissa.
She was a high-school graduation present for my son from the school after a four-year, two-and-a-half trillion dollar investment.
“Thank you for the tuition. Here is a diploma and a plant. Don’t kill it. Alumni Affairs will be reaching out Wednesday.”
There was some early engineering love for the plant that first carefree summer. My son built a solar-powered watering system that measured soil moisture and released dew-sized droplets of humidity as needed, like he was maintaining her in an induced coma.
I stared at this cyborg contraption on his desk in intimidation and disbelief, looked at it closely, and spotted a two-and-a-half trillion dollar price tag. From some other part of the house, my wife yelled up the stairs, “Honey, Alumni Affairs is on the line. Are you home?”
He lost interest in the plant, and carted off to England with dreams and a guitar for a tution-free (!) year on a student exchange.
At the airport outside of security during our goodbye-until-Christmas hugs, he casually asked me to keep Marissa alive.
She was not Marissa in those days. She was ‘a plant’ to keep alive.
This was eight years ago.
I have had two plants in my life. The first was called Marissa. RIP. 1992-1994. She had a single shoot that went about two-and-a-half feet in the air and never had offshoot siblings and listed precariously. At some point, someone advised me to “cut it back.” The year was 1994. I think you can tell me how that went. The last month or so was very, very challenging.
I’m not good at naming, so I also named my son’s graduation plant Marissa (2016-?). When I was a small, innocent child and my imagination was not in full bloom, comparatively, I named two cats “Precious,” back to back. Precious I and Precious II.
Being tasked with keeping Marissa alive was a green-thumb burden I was ill prepared for, and had no interest in. I ran away from the call-to-action like Luke Skywalker in Star Wars, except I didn’t want to “get off the planet” like he did. I was perfectly fine with my desert planet with nothing but sand from here to Obi-Wan-Kenobe’s house. I wanted no part in the adventure.
But, like a Joseph Campbell hero, I reluctantly agreed to my son’s hostage-taking at SeaTac airport. I took on the responsibility, kicking and eye-rolling as mom and dad paced back and forth in parallel with him through the security line.
“Don’t kill her,” he cried out while he was putting his sneakers on somewhere past the radiation machine. It was the last we heard of him until Christmas.
To my great surprise, and like many reluctant parents out of the gate, I grew fond of her. To this day, I stare at her while she is sleeping on my office window sill in the same way a new parent falls in love with their child, but mostly as they sleep with their soft little mouths ajar – completely fucking unlike earlier that afternoon when you wished they would get in their goddamn car seat.
My son returned from England.
It turns out, he never gave a fig if he got Marissa back in an empty pot. He might have mentioned this at airport security.
It was worse, though. He’d forgotten about Marissa entirely by the time he returned home. Shortly after that, he packed his bags once again, this time to head off to college (impossibly, cheaper!) And after drop off, Marissa became mine for the long haul.
Once I’d made the mistake of naming her, it wasn’t like I could just kill her. This is similar to a hostage taking by a serial killer where once the serial killer learns your name and maybe a few personal facts you share between sobs, there is a marginal improvement in your hostage odds.
The way I’ve raised her, Plant Protection Services should cart me away. But… because the plant was already in foster care and there were no other window gardens immediately available, once again she was been entrusted to me.
Over the years, I have come close to killing her both with fertilizer and without fertilizer. I’ve snipped her leaves back until she looked like some orphan with chopped hair in Mad Max. I have pushed her to the limits of what a hot Brooklyn apartment “dry season” can do.
For most of the time we’ve spent together, she’s had a total of three leaves. Each leaf passed the baton to the next leaf just below the surface of the soil. The youngest leaves never grew up to see their parents. And I have watered her under the tap so thoroughly at times that her soil gargled and her leaves hung like spaghetti out the side of a colander.
The discovery of Miracle-Gro was truly a miracle. Carcinogenic as the product may be, it works. One little fluorescent blue grain and poof! For a period there, the results were so amazing I let everyone in the home know every time she grew a quarter of an inch which during those months was daily. My family was cautiously supportive.
A new surprise during that first season of Miracle-Gro. There was an unplanned pregnancy. She shot up in the air, the offshoot of an older mother who’d given up, now ripe with child, and she cast out a proboscis-like tentacle that contained as many little Marissas as a neonatal unit. I’m no expert, but this firmer proboscis was likely the father.
This new pregnancy shoot of Marissa’s wasn’t even the same kind of shoot. It was thicker and reached down well over the edge of the pot like our serial killer escapee tying bedsheets together to get out of the cellar, but after four years of a maximum of eight leaves the entire time, she was with child. It was a renaissance. I didn’t even know plants could have children.
I became over-confident, like someone a bit dim secretly taking care of a wild animal in a sentimental movie. You feel the disaster from the git-go. it didn’t take long for that disaster either:
I chopped off four of the baby Marissas to repot them so they could be closer to their mother at the end.
I don’t like to use the word “killed,” but it was gross negligence. Second-degree herbicide.
Mostly the outcome did not take place in front of Marissa, or really only at the very end when I placed them next to each other. I had tried to nurse them in a sort of “prenatal” wet paper towel before potting them in desperation in the vicinity of their mother. I don’t know what I did wrong, but they are no longer with us. I felt only confusion and plummeting self-confidence. For a period there, I barely spoke to her when I carried her into the bathroom to find just the right water flow so I could gently water her under the tap.
Those were hard years.
Marissa remained alive to grieve.
And also to make more babies! Because once again, she’s back at it like a teenager!
Another round of Miracle-Gro and she got back up on her sprouts. She shot out another proboscis after a recent repotting and gave birth to two more children. Mother and children are all doing well (pictures above and below.) The two hostages may or may not be alive by the time you read this.
I don’t even like plants, not for looking at, not to wandering through or among, and 100% not for eating, but for reasons that escape me I’m going to be distraught if anything happens to Marissa before her replacements are established.
Because unlike everyone else in the family, she knows how to listen. I move her into and out of the light several times a day to make sure she’s not getting over-sunned. As for the children in the shot glass! I relocate them in and out of shadow so often they must be getting dizzy. Sometimes, I imagine them kicking through the uterine walls of the shot glass.
My son has run for the hills, but there is justice. He married a woman who knows plants. They live in a hydroponic nursery.
Marissa, the children and I plod on.
For her part Melanie treats Marissa like a French mistress, steering clear of her when she’s in my office. “Don’t ask, don’t tell.” There have been a few flare-ups (the shot glass mentioned above, say) and, more recently, a question of whether she watered the plants adequately while I was away on a business trip.
I am receptive to all input on Marissa’s health and security, but don’t inquire on custody. Marissa is no longer up for adoption. As I type away here, she is sleeping peacefully, leaves gently ajar, soft dawn sunlight on her green proboscis. Her children float in a shot glass beside her.
No, she’s not going anywhere. I have grown accustomed to her leaves. 🌱
Chapter III of “The Knuckleball Artist” up and early on Sunday. Start here if you haven’t read about my baseball players yet:
Chapter 1: "The Knuckleball Artist"
For Coach DiMaio, who taught a sixth-grader to pitch on Saturday mornings.
I don't think I'll ever stop laughing at "My son built a solar-powered watering system that measured soil moisture and released dew-sized droplets of humidity as needed, like he was maintaining her in an induced coma."
Well, I absolutely adore this story! And Marissa.