A thing I can't explain

Laurie
A thing I can't explain
Starbucks, August 9, 2007

I don't understand our tree, Palmy. When we found him in front of the oleander hedge, stuck in a black plastic tub, he was a stick with a dusty frond. The tips of it were burned. “Look,” Richard pointed, and I rushed over. “I knew you’d have that reaction.”

The tub weighed thirty pounds. Richard lugged it to our patio. Then we bought a big pot and soil at Home Depot. For the first few weeks, I gave him water and placed him in the sun. I snipped off the burned bits from his sad frond, and he looked worse. After a while, a tiny, pointed baby frond poked up from the heart of the stick. Palmy may have been on the brink of extinction, but he’d averted the abyss.

Yesterday Ellen brought Toby to see a psychopharmacologist who spoke to her in Yiddish. Her eyes lit up. She said she wanted to come every day. Prim said she could live another five years. My mother is the Palmy of human beings.

In the park, I noticed Palmy’s relatives growing lush green fronds in the shade along a stream. I removed him from the sun, kept his soil moist, and misted him every few hours with a hose. “You’ve created the conditions of a rain forest,” Richard said. Palmy began sending forth frond after frond, each one larger than its predecessor and hairier—lacey fibers adorn healthy fronds. So far five, lustrous green fans have unfurled. A baby shoot faces the previous one, then, as it emerges, twists out at a 90 degree angle, its accordion pleats opening slowly, the stalks growing springy and strong.

My mother dreams of running for a bus. Strangers watch the tottering old woman and yell for the driver to stop. Toby thanks them, smiling, dimples in her cheeks. She takes the gloved hand of the man who helps her up the stairs. “Oh, thank-you. My legs aren’t young. I wish I had your youth, darling, I wish you all the best, you are so kind." She turns to say goodbye to the people watching her on the street before disappearing into the wheezing chariot.