My Mom is Bringing Home a Lot of Plants Lately

I am panting hard by the time I reach my home. My mom is transferring the inch plant in her new ceramic pot. But already drained by the sweltering heat, I am not able to decipher the variegated sapphire color of the leaves of the inch plant from black.

After inhaling (not drinking) two glasses of iced pineapple juice, I am finally able to get my senses back to their form. I take a shower long enough to cause pruney fingers (my body’s way to assist me in having a better grip of things in water unbeknownst to the fact that I was in the water to let go of things, to loosen my grip from the things encumbering me).

I am jerking the water off my hair; people say jerking off your hair causes split-ends, but I am too restless to wait for the water droplets to trickle down drop by drop. I peek from my window down to the garden; my mom is still there — now spraying effervescent sparkly water on her plants. Every time I watch her work in her garden, I think about the evening when I first heard of her divorce with Baba, when she casually cleaned up the space behind our house to expand her garden.

The sun is now setting down radiating it’s final spectra; same sun that almost sucked the life out of me before, is more forgiving at this time of the day — more beautiful at this time of the day. In that golden light, my mom ambles from plant to plant like a service person taking feedback from her customers.

Even after all of the things around us going haywire, it haunts me how nothing has changed about her — not even the slightest change in the way she tightly pulls one half of her hair into a bun allowing her other half auburn silky hair to flow down her back, in the way she adds extra chicken pieces in her chicken broth in the way Baba liked, in the way she knocks twice at my door even if it’s open to wish me a good night. But, it’s haunting me because changes and a little chaos, at times like this, are more normal than the stagnancies.

I notice her plants creeping inside our house gradually. Now, they are on my study table, on our staircases, beside my bed rack, under our T.V. case, on our dining table. None of these plants bear flowers but they have flashy green leaves shining with proper nutrition and nourishment — the water transpired by them remains in their tips like pearls.

I have tried to muster an explanation about the ubiquitous existence of these plants abruptly brought into our life — a sudden but a subtle change, a small but an important change.

My Baba was a force of nature — a towering, bulky specimen with a beard and curly hair as unruly as the man himself. He would move around the house sweeping the gust of air with great ferocity as if authenticating his presence and corporality. He would always leave behind his traces of existence here and there even if he wasn’t home: butt-dents on the sofa couch, loosened door hinges, large cigar butts in the ashtray. Everyday, my mom would start early in the noon to prepare delicacies for Baba to have in his dinner: creamy chicken curry, baked oysters, chicken broth, wines, chocolate mousse. She would amble from Baba’s chair to the counter back and forth as he enjoyed her food. Everyday was a festival with Baba around us as if my mom was celebrating his existence in our life.

Living with a man having a presence as ostentatious as his for 25 years makes you habituated to small spaces; you get used to with your own furtive presence hiding behind someone else’s humongous existence. And when he leaves, the rooms start swelling up in such a brisk pace that you feel like huddling up in a corner of your room out of nausea; the air starts feeling like it has not been stirred up for a while — so stagnant that you almost can’t breathe; the bed starts having so much space for you to comfortably sleep that you curl up instead; your presence becomes so conspicuous that you start filling up the spaces left behind, to help you hide. I see my mom filling up the void; I see her hiding; I see her curling up; I see her compensating for a life by lives; I see her bringing plants.