Lessons from my orchid plant
“Baby! Come look at the orchid plant, it is budding!” My husband, who is never tasked with taking care of our house plants, exclaimed.
Orchids are intimidating. During the lock down, I look to the gurus of YouTube in an attempt to save my dying orchids. I replaced the soil, the pot, the pebbles and everything in between for a chance of their survival.
Safe to say that even if I am not plant aficionado, I need them in my life beyond the reasons of breathing life and beauty into my home. How can I nurture someone who’s already drumming to its own rhythm? They know exactly how much water, soil, air and sunlight to strive, except whispering the answer to me in a language that I can understand！ Like a Zen master, they let me guess. The guessing exercise over the years with some advice here and there from friends and family is what contributed to these three little buds in my latest orchid plant, gifted to us on my daughter’s second birthday.
My mom who stayed with us during my daughter’s infant months, reluctantly left my dad with plant care instructions while she was stateside caring for her granddaughter. She ended up missing out on one of the finest blooms of her mature orchid plant, catching glimpse of that climatic moment merely from her small screen. Were the years of her love and care wasted? I couldn’t help but equating that moment to the a disappointing parent missing out on a daughter’s wedding or a son’s graduation.
I never dare dream of a second bloom from my orchid plants. Once their flowers shed, I tend to accept that it is just a matter of time before the plant dies. Though I never give up trying, why didn’t I?
Just because they/I can. I know so they can bloom again. The bar was never set for us to keep them alive when we receive or buy an orchid plant. There is always the next orchid that you can buy! Keeping anything going, especially many things at once, seems to be the ultimate practice for me.
How can routines of care not seen as burdens but as a reflection of how we can play an active role in sustaining the many loves to the best of our ability? That being human is innately tied to the progression of time and how it affects nature following each sunrise and sunset? How can the many tasks at hand are not distractions to the few that we perceived as more important?
My ongoing quest seems to be finding the balance between work, family and art. As an artist, time is never linear. I often got lost in time when I am zoning in and out of my art. Work provides the stability to my life and family, but also takes away my time and space to practice art. As a mom, I am at awe with my daughter’s ability to find play and creativity even in the most mundane of things. She could play with discarded packaging and scraps without differentiating toys from trash. Caring for her nonetheless also occupies time and energy. As an employee, I fret about the minimizing ways of how we are just labor force operating in the production chain to serve our employers’ interests. Our dedication to our work (via loss of time to our family and art ) is often reduced to numbers in spreadsheets and abstract measure of productivity that employers use to predict their own success. If being alive and human involves around us observing and experiencing time, then majority of that time, 40 hours a week on average, are spent on tasks that don’t quite define our humanity.
Perhaps my orchid plant’s blooming is just karma, that no matter how I am experiencing time: non-linearly, on “reserve”, or on a payroll, because I have yet to give up on its survival, I get to see it bloom! Maybe, time has always been on my side, waiting patiently and diligently for me to be present, to be grateful so that I get to appreciate all the sunrises that come my way, waiting to tell me, “Honey, there is no magic, just the right amount of sunlight, water, air, and love!”
Underlining all of this contemplation is how much happiness these buds are bringing me [and my husband], no matter the circumstances I am in. Therefore, I shall keep it going, knowing that there will always be a smile of tomorrow!
