You Are The Schefflera Of My Dreams

Even before you came into my life that day at Home Depot when you called to me from the clearance aisle, a lonely and abandoned look about your stalks, I knew it was only a matter of time before the hole in my heart was filled through vegetative destiny. I nursed you back to health until no one would have guessed I bought you for $4.99, giving you weekly dosages of Miracle-Gro and root stimulator until you were a vibrant green, the green of the Green Monster in Fenway Park except for your variegated parts streaked yellow as if a child had painted you with French’s Mustard. You grew in the southern window of the living room , stout and drought resistant, an Australian native who spoke to me in my dreams like another green creature of God, the Geico lizard. You were my everything, the reason I came home from my work at the spinach factory with a sense of purpose and delight, a smile on my face as I walked through the door.

Yet now you tell me you don’t want to live anymore, your leaves drooping and brown around the edges, no sign of spider mites or scale, just slow, encompassing death. At least you tell me that. It’s not an answer I’m prepared to accept however for without you, my dreams no longer will be filled with visions and remembrances of that trip we took to Napa Valley. You must live I tell you, I will accept nothing else! Without you, I am nothing, Germont without Violetta, Count Vronksy without Anna Karina. Without you, my darling Schefflera, I cease to exist. I will still go to the spinach factory, still inspect each 10th can for imperfections and listeria but I will not be the same. You and I are one, plant and man a single soul between us. Life would be meaningless without you.

Inspired by an exercise in 642 Things To Write About. I’m toying with another run at NaNoWriMo and need to get the daily word count up.