Hearts and Hope

I kill plants. I don’t mean to. I’ve often described myself as a herbicidal maniac. Plants … just … die.

But not my Purple Heart. I’ve had it for almost 3 years. It was so beautiful in the beginning. For a couple of years, even. It grew. It bloomed. Then, one day, it stopped blooming. All the blooming stalks fell off. It began to whither. I thought I knew what to do. I thought I figured out a solution. I didn’t ask for help. I just hoped that I could do enough to save my Purple Heart.

I wrote this to Hope Itself…

I think I killed my Purple Heart. 

It was root-bound. I could tell by the way the soil pulled away from the pot. I could tell by the number of stalks, thick and old, poked up, slowly dying. There were new buds, of course. Baby leaves even. But it wasn’t thriving. Every week, I’d pinch off another piece of lifeless plant. 

I decided to repot it. 

This plant - my first Purple Heart, the product of gifted stems given on a sad fall morning in an even sadder year - was root-bound in a pot with an 18” diameter. I could barely lift it. How could I repot it? But something had to be done. There was too much death, too many lines with no leaves… and sometimes, whole branches would just wither away. 

So I picked it up. I pushed my fingers down in the space between the pot and the soil. Roots. Wet roots. There’s no drainage when a plant is root-bound. Everything gets trapped inside. And the top-soil gets filled with fungus. 

I balanced it, just barely, on my thighs. Then moved it to the desk. I hurt my knee again and putting weight on it was unwise. Balanced, steady, I pushed and pulled at the soil. At the roots. Then I felt the places where the roots had begun to attach to the pot. I’d left it too long. Roots will always seek growth… even if it isn’t possible and the plant dies. 

I pulled the soil free, slowly. And I realized my hands were too small to hold the root bundle. I realized too late. It fell. Top down. All the baby leaves. All the new growth. All the life lay broken in the box where I’d planned for death to go. 

I held the pot. Barely balanced. Mostly empty. Just soil and broken roots. Wet soil. Soggy roots. I dumped out the soil. I pulled out the broken roots. And I reached into the box for life. 

I salvaged as much as I could. So many broken pieces. So few still attached to roots. Short roots. Long stems. I buried them. I put the broken pieces in water, a little bit of soil, like I always do. 

I guess I knew what would happen. A little. I think I could’ve - or should’ve - guessed that broken roots can’t sustain long stems. If I had given it a little more thought I would’ve realized that all of those roots I so carefully pulled away from the pot were the reason why all the baby leaves reached so far away from the pot. But I didn’t think. And I didn’t guess. I just … did the thing. 

Where once was a whole lot of life and a little death became a whole lot of empty … and a little death. Soaked soil became mud in the yard and fresh, rich, new ground held … brokenness. 

I didn’t cry when I dropped my Purple Heart. I figured that whatever remained would be sufficient. And I trust that all of these broken pieces will, somehow, grow again. 

My first Purple Heart began in a coffee mug. It’s … in pieces. And the bulk of it is dead or dying. But I have two more, thriving plants … born from my mistakes. 

I’d try so carefully to tend to my Purple Heart. I would water it, clean its base of dead leaves, pour cinnamon on the growing fungus (it’s a thing!)… and inevitably break a whole stem. There is no way to repair it. But I’d put the broken parts in water until roots grew. And now they thrive. Over and over and over again: broken hearts give way to life. 

I’m pretty sure I killed my Purple Heart. And I know I cannot recover what is already gone. But from the bottom of a box, I just might have salvaged a whole new thing. Maybe from all of the brokenness, from all the death that was my first Purple Heart, a new plant will grow. Maybe it’ll even thrive. 

I really thought it was dead.

I checked the broken pieces of my Purple Heart. Some were… water-logged. Too full of what should have been nourishing to stay alive. They were rotting in the water. Some were stable but showed no growth. Some parts had roots growing from strange places. Some branches had new leaves. Slowly growing. Without my help. Without my hope.

I left my Purple Hearts for a week or more. I hid them behind blackout curtains to ensure they’d receive at least the sun. And I left My Purple Heart, in hospice. Still broken. But growing. Hopeless. But with evidence of life. When I came back, my broken Purple Heart, the one I swore I had killed, was thriving. The few broken parts still in containers had long roots. The pot was full of baby leaves. The leaves were standing tall. Not yet purple again, but still full of life.

I thought I killed my Purple Heart. So I buried it.

My Purple Heart is alive. My Purple Heart thrives. One day, my Purple Heart will bloom again.

Sometimes, we bury things deep inside of us. We bury our feelings because they’ve been hurt too much. We bury our dreams because they’re broken. We bury our capacity to love because fear has tangled it in thorns. We bury hope. But if we go back and look, we just might find that what we buried thrives in absence of our picking at it. We might just find that, against all hope, our hope, our hearts, our love, our feelings, our dreams still live … and are quickly taking over the container. If we go back to look at all we buried, instead of pretending it is not there, we might just find we are still alive.

I did not kill my Purple Heart. I tried to tell Hope Itself … but it was buried too deep to hear me.

#PreCoffeeThoughts #LessonsFromMyPurpleHeart #WhatIWriteWhenImHidingFromWriting #Earthiness