The Things You Feed
Three or four years ago, I went on a Tinder date with a man I fell for – hard and fast as they say. It was an ambitious first date, as Tinder dates went and perhaps still go. I met him near his apartment, a bag packed with cubed cheese, sliced fruit, mediocre
I liked him immediately. Though I didn’t have nearly as much practice talking to strangers as I do now, I felt immediately comfortable with him as we tucked ourselves into the back seat of an uber, the cheap gray upholstery tickling the backs of my legs as I wedged my bag of goodies near my feet. We were headed to a nearby park for one of the Chicago park district’s “Movies in the Park,” and we planned to see Back to the Future. On the way, he told me he had a plan for what we would sit on to take in the film. I was curious.
We arrived early and staked out a spot – not too close, but near enough to pretend we cared about the movie, and he pulled out our seating – a gigantic orange blow up couch that folded into a square roughly the size of trapper-keeper (you know, the one my mom never let me have). I giggled. I’m pretty sure he said his mom bought it for him, and I found it adorable. He’d brought an air pump and, within minutes, we were lowering ourselves tentatively onto the squeaky plastic, our bodies dipping inevitably toward one another as our collective weight compressed the flimsy couch. My bare knee brushed his denim covered one. Electricity.
He reached his arm around my shoulder just as a woman with a camera approached us. “I’m on the neighborhood board!” she chirped. “Can I take your picture?” We smiled shyly at one another “Sure!” he said. “Great. It will be up on our website. I love your couch!” she replied. We beamed into the camera and I thought one of those things you’re not supposed to think but think anyway and then hate yourself for thinking that went something like “If we get married, we can use this photo on our wedding website. What the hell! Why did you just think that? Oh my God, don’t think things like that. Just smile for the damn camera.” Click.
At some point, we decided the couch looked cool but wasn’t actually comfortable and we moved to a blanket spread out in front of it. I’m sure we ate the fruit and cheese, and we definitely drank the rosé, and before I knew it the movie was over, the park was empty, night had fallen, and we were still talking – my legs crisscrossed, our knees touching, me staring into his eyes wondering if he was ever going to kiss me. Spoiler, he did. It rocked.
We dated for a very short time that felt like forever. I remember him in snapshots. Flashes. The pictures he sent me from his niece’s birthday party, him singing along poorly to country music in his living room, his elderly dog, his apartment’s proximity to the blue line. He lived in a swanky building near the river, but he could only afford it because the previous tenant had been murdered. In his unit. So it was difficult for the building management to rent out. He was a huge Johnny Cash fan, and he told me when he saw me on Tinder, I looked so much like Reese Witherspoon he was sure he’d found his June Carter. I swooned.
His apartment was full of plants, and I told him I was currently keeping one single plant alive, and I was so proud of it. “Have you re-potted it?” He asked. “Um….no,” I answered, not knowing that re-potting was a thing. He convinced me that my lone plant was probably busting at the seams of the tiny pot I’d been gifted it in and that I had to re-pot it. I went to Home Depot the next day and bought a bigger pot, potting soil, and a watering can. On my living room floor, I excised that plant only to discover that it absolutely did not need to be re-potted. It was one of those vine-like plants with strikingly beautiful leaves and nonexistent roots – a perfect metaphor for our relationship.
No matter. I re-potted the plant and sent him a picture. He congratulated me on my responsible plant ownership. Some weeks later, he was dust in the wind. Ghosting in its purest form – no text, no call, no explanation. But I knew it was coming. At the end of a date, he said he had forgotten something and then handed me my favorite hair tie. I’d left it at his place. It was fluorescent orange and yellow, and as I slid it on my wrist, in one of those awful, sickening moments of female intuition, I thought “I’m never going to see him again.” And I didn’t.
A few months later, the plant died. It wasn’t that I didn’t water it, or that I didn’t love it, or that it suddenly grew substantial roots that suffocated in a too-small pot. In fact, I don’t know what killed it. Until its untimely end, a metaphor. I dumped the plant in the trash but kept the pot as well as the nearly full bag of potting soil. When I moved to my new place, the empty pot and bag of soil moved with me and resided in an otherwise bare closet. Occasionally I would think that maybe I should get a new plant. Or just give the potting soil away, because really, who am I kidding? I keep a dog alive now, who has time for plants?
Last weekend, I met my friend Jen and her friend Abbey out in the Bucktown neighborhood. We started at Paradise Park – an indescribable, pulsating, neon, hub of twenty-something sexual tension and reasonably priced beer. I actually waited in line to get in. We stayed for one drink and then moved on with plans to go to Northside on Damen, just a short walk away. As we waited at the bustling intersection of Damen, North Avenue, and Milwaukee I turned to Jen and asked, “What’s the name of that rooftop around here?” “Looking for a rooftop bar?” a male voice next to me said. I turned toward it and explained to the tall man with a kind face and baseball hat that I used to live in this neighborhood but couldn’t remember the name of the nearby rooftop bar. We ascertained that I was thinking of “Whiskey Business,” we exchanged a few more pleasantries, and carried on our individual ways.
An hour later, Jen, Abbey and I were finishing up our meal and drink at Northside, commenting on the authenticity of the plants that surrounded us in the greenhouse-y covered patio where we were seated. I thought they were real, the girls didn’t, and our server assured us they were absolutely the real deal. As we waited for our check I turned my head to the left and locked eyes with the man I had spoken to at the busy intersection. He was walking toward me, and as we made eye contact he tilted his head and said: “Hey, didn’t I just see you on the street?” “Yes! And then you came here?” I answered/asked. “I work here! I’m a manager,” he replied – much to our surprise. We fell into
It turns out the plants are one of his favorite aspects of the bar. “You can take a clipping of the vines – they’re super easy to grow,” he told us. “Actually, hold on a sec.” He disappeared and reappeared a ten minutes later with two plastic cups filled with a couple inches of water and a substantial clipping from the wall. “Just put it in a pot with some dirt and water. It’s so easy. It will grow,” he promised. We thanked him for his generosity, and I have to say it’s the first time I’ve walked out of a bar with a plant in hand.
The clipping sat in its cup on my counter for the past week. I’d glance at it, move it around, think about whether I was going to do anything with it. Always, in the back of mind was the empty pot and nearly full bag of soil just taking up space in my guest bedroom closet.
Today, on the eve of my 36th birthday, I dug out the pot, I filled it with soil, I packed it down, and I slid the small, green vine clipping into its new home. I filled my watering can, and I watered my new plant. I set it on my counter next to the lovely bouquet my mom bought me for my birthday, and I smiled.
Will my new plant thrive? Will it sprout new leaves, and will tender roots weave their way through the loose soil? Will the tiny clipping off the wall in a Chicago bar beat the odds to become a lush, green, addition to my home? I don’t know. There’s a whole lot I don’t know. But I do know that the things that grow are the things you feed. The things that survive and thrive are the things to which you give love, and light, and food, and water. So that is what I will do in my 37th year of life. I’ll give sunshine, and water, and love, and compassion, and belief to the most unlikely, the most fragile, and the most tenuous of lives. Perhaps this plant, too, will be a metaphor.
Until next time…