When we got my dad’s diagnosis, which I’ll talk about at a later date and time, I felt incredibly powerless. It’s only natural to go into the mental debate of what’s better: losing someone unexpectedly or being handed a death sentence and watching the person you love disappear little by little albeit rapidly at the same time? It’s a rhetorical question because the answer is the same: they both suck.

I started tending to plants in an almost frantic, feverish way. I brought new plants in but I also rediscovered several plants in the backyard that had been neglected, left to fend for themselves, for years. I found myself tending hard to the deserted plants, cleaning off cobwebs, running spiders out with the hose, replacing cracked pots, and so on and so forth.

I had gone to the Long Beach flea with my girl Cindy a few weeks back and there was this succulent hanging in one of the tents. I asked the owner how much he wanted for the plant and he laughed and said “two thousand dollars”. It wasn’t for sale. Probably because it was so unique and so beautiful. It dawned on me sometime later that I actually had that same plant in my backyard. It was one of the neglected ones and it sat hanging outside my kitchen window dying in front right there in front of me.

Somehow the powerlessness I felt over my dad’s diagnosis transferred over to a fierce urge to save some of these plants, particularly that one I saw at the flea market; the one I knew had so much potential but sat otherwise dying in plain sight right outside my kitchen window.

I cut off some of the dead parts, cleaned off the cobwebs, started watering it again, and gave it a new home outside my bedroom door.

I’ve been watching week after week as the leaves slowly started turning green again. Yesterday this little bundle of pink flowers on it bloomed.

Note to self: What you water will grow.

I left some of the cobwebs on the leaves. It captures the way opposites coexist. The ever present integration of opposites: Old and new. Beauty and pain. Life and death.

The other day Van poked fun at what he has declared to be my plant “addiction”. Hooper was quick to interject: “It’s her healthy coping mechanism”. Feels good when shit you throw their way sticks. They’re getting it, because they’re watching it. And there’s so much beauty in that, too.

Finding you is a choice I choose to make. I see you dad, I see you in everything.