(warning -- sappy alert)
Jack, my hiking buddy, has been sending me emails asking for my "expert" advice. It seems that he has a little horticultural problem. The seeds he special-ordered, for an exotic tropical African plant that he'd very much like to grow for its delicious berries, will not take. These berries are special, Jack tells me, because if you put one under your tongue, everything sour will taste sweet. Pure lemon juice transforms into sugar water to your senses. The instuctions ask for acidic soil, so he's practically nuked his soil with sulfur. And he's tried to counteract the buffering in the soil by diluting it with sand. He's also bought a pH meter from Home Depot that reads "7" no matter whether you put the sensor in bicarbonate or carbonic acid. But the seeds just sit in their pots with their non-existant arms folded and shaking their non-existant little seed heads, "uh-uh, no way". Some have even germinated with much promise, only to die back immediately, "psyche!".
For a while I was having a little bit of a love problem. I put my heart out there more than a few times. So many bad dates. So many good dates that turned out to be with bad boys. So many, in fact, that as a scientist and an analytical thinker I started to think that since I was the common denominator on all these dates, that perhaps I was the problem. I was too picky, or too sensitive, or too nice, or too ... something that I didn't know, and would never be able to fix. A couple times love even sprouted, only to die back. Nothing stings quite like that. To think you finally have it all figured out, and the rug pulled out from under you. Meanwhile my friends around me seemed to find love so effortlessly.
For Jack, I've been trying to come up with the secret to his seeds. While this is definitely not my area of expertise, I did take a plant propagation class in school, where I learned that some seeds are tougher than others. Some can be dropped haphazardly onto any soil, any conditions, and they will just grow like mad. Some require a trick to germinate. For example, some seeds need to be soaked in acid to mimic what it is like to pass through the gut of an animal that happened to munch on the fruit they hid in. It's a trick the plant evolved to have - so that they would not germinate in the wild until an animal had the chance to carry them a ways from the mother plant, and euphamistically, to ensure that there would be nutrients deposited all around the baby seed. Horiculturalists will sometimes "scarify" these seeds with hard seed coats to get them to germinate. They will file tiny scratches into the seed's outer shell to give the tiny embryonic plant inside a chance to break through.
Fire is another such trick. Pictures of Yellowstone following the great forest fires in the 80s famously depict the masses of purple fireweed that sprang forth out of the scorched earth between the blackened and barren tree stalks, having lain dormant in the soil for ages waiting for the signal of intense heat to inform them that the previously closed forest was now allowing light to shine in. There are also some pine cones that will only open to release their seeds after they've been subjected to fire.
Cold can be yet another trick for germination. Seeds may require "stratification", a period of cold and dampness, basically a "winter". Purple liatris needs this for one, a prairie flower. The prairie is a clockwork of plants that bloom at just the perfect time during the season. Too soon and they may be burned by frost, too late and they may be shaded out by taller prairie grasses. Some wait until very late when the grasses dry out and fall back before making their late appearance. All must be timed perfectly with when their pollinators will be able to find them, bees, moths, butterflies, even wind.
It would appear that my own heart required some tricks for proper germination. It needed to be broken a few times. To be devoured by loves that ended up not working out so well. To have little holes filed into it, little hurts from when I felt crushed by others, little emptinesses from times in my life I will miss. My heart needed the fire of someone passionate to bring it to life. It also required a "winter", a barren and loveless time where I felt spring would never come, to truely appreciate it when it did. And it needed for the timing to be just right.
I still haven't figured out the secret to Jack's seeds. But I believe I may have found the secret to my own germination problem, since I already feel the tiny leaves in my heart unfolding ... jason.
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Thursday, February 15, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
How We Met
One of the first things someone will ask when I introduce Jason, is "How did you meet?" It's a very simple question, really, and this person is expecting the simple and true answer that I will give them: "Through friends."
But it always gives me a moment of pause, a moment of my life flashing before my eyes, and the parts of his that I've learned of so far, and I want to start at the beginning, the very beginning: when he was born, and when a few years later, I was born, and all the circumstances ... where he lived, where I lived, that we did not live near enough to each other to meet at the wrong time.
His grandfather introducing him, as a boy, to a great love of nature, a great blue heron just around the bend of their path, his head turned to their footsteps, wings quivering in readiness to leap into the air, and into a boy's heart. My dad taking the little green paperback dichotomous key around the backyard so that we could key out the apple tree, the ash, I still remember standing under the ash tree with the leaves in my hand, and it was a new and exciting game to know that this was not just any tree.
We both loved dinosaurs, and for some reason, the stegosaurus. Perhaps we were both pacifists from early on, going for the vegetarian one. When he was catching dragonflies, I was catching fireflies, and I left mine on the picnic table overnight in a jar, and coming back the next morning to grave disappointment, while he raised his more mercifully in an acquarium.
And then there were the hardships and heartbreaks we endured, each with its lonely pain, where knowing that the other person just existed might have made things tolerable. But without that knowlege, with no crutch to stand on, we learned so much more, and became who we are. We learned we are fragile, but we endure. There were our almost-loves, our almost-forevers, and when they ended, we had to trust that was for a reason, one that we wouldn't know for a while.
I don't know, yet, what inspired Jason to first love and write poetry. But I didn't like poetry at all until my senior year of high school, when I had an influential teacher named Mr. Brown who introduced me to the modern poets. Perhaps if I hadn't been able to love and appreciate poetry, I wouldn't have been able to love and appreciate Jason, since it is so much a part of him.
And then there were the moments that turned the trajectories of our lives in wild directions, but directions toward each other none-the-less. A moment on a mountaintop in Colorado for Jason which made him reconsider what was important to him. A moment in an ordinary hallway for me, when I was introduced to the first soil scientist of my life, who happened to be looking for summer help.
And there was a time when we were very far apart, in California. I loved it there. I had a life there. But something called me back - my family, a job waiting for me. But maybe something else, too. In fact, it always felt like Cali was temporary for me, from the day I arrived.
And then our mutual friends -- only two degrees apart we were, for many years. Our email addresses in mass emails inviting us to things were nearer to each other than we ever were. Thank goodness Susie came to work at Argonne. Thank goodness Susie's father knew our boss at Argonne from college. Thank goodness I came back to Argonne and met Susie, and that Susie knew a certain Kelly B., who knew a certain boy. And thank goodness we didn't meet sooner. We both agree that timing could have hurt us.
So how did Jason and I meet? Maybe next time I should be ready with the answer I feel is closest to the simple truth: "A miracle."
But it always gives me a moment of pause, a moment of my life flashing before my eyes, and the parts of his that I've learned of so far, and I want to start at the beginning, the very beginning: when he was born, and when a few years later, I was born, and all the circumstances ... where he lived, where I lived, that we did not live near enough to each other to meet at the wrong time.
His grandfather introducing him, as a boy, to a great love of nature, a great blue heron just around the bend of their path, his head turned to their footsteps, wings quivering in readiness to leap into the air, and into a boy's heart. My dad taking the little green paperback dichotomous key around the backyard so that we could key out the apple tree, the ash, I still remember standing under the ash tree with the leaves in my hand, and it was a new and exciting game to know that this was not just any tree.
We both loved dinosaurs, and for some reason, the stegosaurus. Perhaps we were both pacifists from early on, going for the vegetarian one. When he was catching dragonflies, I was catching fireflies, and I left mine on the picnic table overnight in a jar, and coming back the next morning to grave disappointment, while he raised his more mercifully in an acquarium.
And then there were the hardships and heartbreaks we endured, each with its lonely pain, where knowing that the other person just existed might have made things tolerable. But without that knowlege, with no crutch to stand on, we learned so much more, and became who we are. We learned we are fragile, but we endure. There were our almost-loves, our almost-forevers, and when they ended, we had to trust that was for a reason, one that we wouldn't know for a while.
I don't know, yet, what inspired Jason to first love and write poetry. But I didn't like poetry at all until my senior year of high school, when I had an influential teacher named Mr. Brown who introduced me to the modern poets. Perhaps if I hadn't been able to love and appreciate poetry, I wouldn't have been able to love and appreciate Jason, since it is so much a part of him.
And then there were the moments that turned the trajectories of our lives in wild directions, but directions toward each other none-the-less. A moment on a mountaintop in Colorado for Jason which made him reconsider what was important to him. A moment in an ordinary hallway for me, when I was introduced to the first soil scientist of my life, who happened to be looking for summer help.
And there was a time when we were very far apart, in California. I loved it there. I had a life there. But something called me back - my family, a job waiting for me. But maybe something else, too. In fact, it always felt like Cali was temporary for me, from the day I arrived.
And then our mutual friends -- only two degrees apart we were, for many years. Our email addresses in mass emails inviting us to things were nearer to each other than we ever were. Thank goodness Susie came to work at Argonne. Thank goodness Susie's father knew our boss at Argonne from college. Thank goodness I came back to Argonne and met Susie, and that Susie knew a certain Kelly B., who knew a certain boy. And thank goodness we didn't meet sooner. We both agree that timing could have hurt us.
So how did Jason and I meet? Maybe next time I should be ready with the answer I feel is closest to the simple truth: "A miracle."
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