Planted with Love

I am laying half ass dead with a book in my hand, comforted by a soft cushion supporting my neck with legs crisscrossed under a soft plush duvet. An unashamed glass of burgundy filled embarrassingly to the brim, sits on the table for a break sake in between this scheduled read-a-thon session. In timed intervals, I pick up my glass for a sip with eyes fixated on the page with balanced prescriptions at the hook of my nose. As my lips reach for that second sip, a couple drops of fermented grape juice find themselves bleeding into the pages of this book. A little spill and a few drops trickle down my throat to soak into an inconsequential blotch on the collar of my night robe. I watch as the wine droplet soaks to form a natural pattern on the page, right around the sentence that I had just finished reading. Both equally beautiful, bleeding bit by bit, inside of me.

I think to myself with a wry smile, only if I could ever find a perfect balance? I am a walking imperfect disaster but my egalitarian feminist spirit and my wannabe try-hard core on the yoga mat can both lend me a sense of equilibrium to be in a head space to adult. Teaching me in a beautiful moment to love myself and some days, heck I do! But then there are days when I am a self loathing, cuss machine yelling ….”jeez when will our gender finally learn to drive?” stuck behind a woman texting and driving on a single lane at the speed of ten when she could easy rev up the gas peddle to thirty. My drier than vermouth honest humor does not help me bag ‘miss popular’ sash and more often than not, by saying wrong things at the right time, I need to schedule mandatory self care days to read, rejuvenate and replenish my blood stream with my choice of reds. I am “learning” as the wise might say. The wise keep getting wiser and I keep learning.

I take another big gulp and swish the wine around my mouth to taste it completely – wine is delicious. I say that aloud to myself dwelling on the dalliance of this juice. Another sip to dive right back into my reading so I don’t self loathe any further. Self love is preached but seldom found. Wine is easier to find in any grocery aisle.

The last time I was in Whole Foods, I had seen a woman checking out a greeting card that read, “Wine improves with age. You improve with wine.” I walked past her yelling joyfully “YOU BET! It makes me a better person….and yes that is yet again my resolution for the third consecutive year!”I winked with my teeth flashing at the stranger. She looked at me stoically with non expressive eyes. Instinctively, I had to run my tongue smooth over my teeth to check if I had spinach (or kale) just to reconfirm her reaction. Nope! I walked off with my cart with my classic RBF (resting bitch face) thinking who even picks up a card like that if there is no drop of joy in them? Not like I sprinkled happy one liners at her over a condolence card! She does need a ton of wine I thought as I glided through the store.

But the point is, it requires effort to see good in myself. There must be a Gandhi within me which is stifled and wants to come out. Now before your eyes roll harder than the spinning wheel of fortune, I might remind you that the world is full of possibilities. Touching on that serious note….(when I am not hiding behind my humor and intellect) a few things in my life do make me feel or think good of myself- reading, sipping wine, running under blue skies, standing under a blooming tree, languidly applying mascara to open up ebony lashes reminding me of Bambi, painting my lips with brightest red color (power move) and the latest – yoga! Laying on my mat after butt up and down asanas to think of happy unicorns!

This quiet feeling around the house is similar to how one might feel inside a monastery. Firstly, I am alone but in a good way- what’s the word? Ah solitude….bliss isn’t it? (please remember I wrote this before pandemic) Alexa is playing something soothing in the background. Dramatic highs and lows of jazz nudging me to think of my moods around PMS.

Another wry smile and another big sip for January is a mercury retrograde mix-tape with cantankerous bitch undercurrents.

January, typically brings morbid gray weather with pouring rain and work. Dark clouds envelop the skies. Lack of sunlight makes me cranky and restless. In 2020, I thought I could do better of this wretched month but my surfing lessons of riding a tsunami wave of emotions and exhaustion began. I surfed this metaphorical wave of a mix really- an incomprehensible medley of ennui, angst and weltschmerz combined with hating work, weather and everyone including myself the most. I deleted social media accounts. I unsubscribed media newsletters. I tried meme cleanse and whatsapp detox. I slow waltz with my own arms around myself with a face pack with salmon in the oven with lemon zest with an open bottle of wine. With Ramy gone for three weeks and the house to myself, I decided to throw myself into self care of the best kinds. The only human interaction was watching “Little Women” with my girl friend and meeting another over charcoal broiled juicy steak else I reposed to brood in my sanctuary of peace.

In retrospect, this would look really different since no one saw quarantine coming! I read a lot. I sipped and read into the unknown not knowing what spring of 2020 was to bring upon us. Ides of March were to introduce a curse to humankind once again- a global emergency amidst a pandemic paranoia.

But like any other time, good or bad – books have offered solace to connect with oneself, people, societies and cultures to remind that reading is indeed a friend you can depend upon.

Ah back to the couch, reading and spilling….Right as I pick my glass for another gulp, my cell-phone begins to ring. My mother’s face was flashing on it and yes, it was also snowing. My spurious moments of self created peace, crumbled into nothingness. Hot faced Camus flashed in my head as he smoked away his cigarette with elan and whispered into my ears…..”give up Bish, remember the life is dark and void of meaning…..” I hastily blinked and picked up the phone and there she said in a high pitched voice, “hellllloooo Noni.” I casually responded with a hint of boredom in my tone and a mild sigh, “Hello Ushu.”

My mother is made of less sugar, more spice and all things not so nice. Perhaps, Gandhi’s benevolence is inherited and fantasy doesn’t code your genes. Mother and I can be sassy and salty and that’s why we always wage a war. She wants me to be a better person and I, in my most philanthropic endeavor, wish her the same.

I resent authority and she ain’t particularly democratic in her parenting style. My mother, to the eyes, is simply beautiful. Her smile is perfect with a sunken depression in her left cheek that crinkles enough to be make a stunning dimple. Her skin smooth like butter and hair lustrous. Her smile can light up the darkest room but she has her ways too, she will suck the air out of the room in equal speeds because she is sprinkled with granulated cheeky humor. To that, she can add some pepper to your wounds as the final garnish. She takes pride in herself and loves her children. But most of all, my mother loves her garden almost to a fault.

Now as a mother of a 33 year old woman, she still wants to own my soul because she brought me into the world and I still rebel. We are in an endless cat and a mouse chase. Tom and Jerry love each other – just so you know and that is a disclaimer not in illegible print. This phone call will mean business about how must I do life. How I must be more feminine, speak less, drink less, run less, listen more, be more and be whatever she wants me to be in that moment! In days of exhaustion, I often flinch with acidity laced in my tone or just put the phone on speaker and lay on couch hear her talk away and nod my head in disapproval with mild interjections of yes and no so she knows I am still on the line.

In the hay days, mother ( I call her ‘Ushu’) was a spectacle to behold. I remember her arriving to my school (my awkward pre teen days) one autumn afternoon in a teal blue saree, her waist slender, her belly flat with a perfect rounded belly button and her arms sinewy yet feminine. She had sunglasses masking her face to just an extent to invoke a certain mystery which she coupled with a smooth brisk walk exuding high vibrant energy. She was the chief guest in my school and I loathed every second of it. I was embarrassed when my school friends admired her silly speech, beauty and remarkable fitness. I flashed my braces to one of my classmates and popped my eyes bigger to say, “She’s pretty but she is tough.” My classmate still stuck with adulation, I continued..”I mean tough to live with.” Nothing could melt Mrs. Tough but show her a garden in bloom, her face would light up with an unusual glimmer and there would be a slight hope that you could get a few bucks more for pocket money. The catch was to find her in one of her floral moods in the garden. That day in school, I remember as she took a walk with our Principal solely to admire dahlias.

But this call was different. Strangely and yet not, she mildly asked me, “Noni, I was wondering about the red geraniums that I planted in the two little pots in the backyard?” I sighed a deep breath of relief because it seemed like I just missed the litany of unwarranted questions that I was expecting. “She is in one of her garden moods.” I thought to myself and a surreptitious smile appeared at the curve of my wine stained mouth.

I calmly put my feet up and with another sip in my mouth to tell her uprightly that I haven’t had a chance to check on them, rather than I had forgotten about them. She remained quiet upon hearing my nonchalant attitude towards her plant. She asked me somberly how my day was. I laid back to tell her that I am using this alone time with Ramy travelling to focus on self care almost making it my entire priority. I told her that I am using this me time to read, run, organize and detox and that solitude is providing credence to the testimony of self discovery. I chuckled as I continued….”you know mom, and that is a transcendental journey of a lifetime. You know I have this urge to explore, seek, actualize and examine myself….”

She sighed and gently ruffled my feathers because she is my mother and no, she did not eat a bowl of ennui for breakfast that morning. She remarked, “hah…I did not know I had a nun for a daughter who won’t miss her man and would read for pleasure or God or both.”

“Oh mummy, you don’t get it. Its a process and also I seek independence. Freedom. Freedom of mind and heart that is very difficult to explain- to embrace me, become me and finally find myself.”

She now took a dagger of words to plunge into my heart when I was at my notable excited form to help her realize my “weird-never-conforming” angst. Unimpassioned, she made a noteworthy point, “when could we have ever stopped you from being yourself? I hoped as a mother only if I could.” “Fair enough!” I coyly agreed. And then mother gently drifted to give me an update of her garden, bursting with purile excitement about how an old orchid root that she casually grafted in one of the Litchi tree trunks, had sprouted to life. I heard some more details on the horticulture process of grafting – details for which I could not care for. But I lend my mom an ear somedays because I like the ecstatic tone in her voice. “She is in one of her garden moods.” I think again. I even like the sound of it even though I do not understand.

Before she hung up, she delicately brought up the red geraniums again. Her voice happy, she told me that she thinks of the two pots. They often come to her mind and that she wonders how healthy they are and how well they must have grown.

“After all, I planted them with love.” She said with a tone of satisfaction.

Then she went on to get an update on one aloevera, an orchid in living room and a half dead palm that she spent efforts on resurrecting.

“Plants are not people Mother.” I daresay but mind has a mouth too. Not wine stained so it does not speak aloud.

After the phone call ended, I resumed reading and when it was time for bedtime, I tucked myself into bed. Thinking about galaxies of a zillion minuscule issues and feelings, the geraniums suddenly came to my mind! “Ah mother!” I muttered as I wrapped myself in the wine stained robe and found myself picking two little pots of small geranium plants with a few flowers and buds in my snow covered backyard.

The two little pots of crimson geraniums sprinkled with snow flakes looked like holidays arrived all over again. I brought them in and put them in a neat corner and dusted off the snow flakes gently. That night after several nights, sleep came to me easy.

In the first week of March, when everything was cancelled, I took the baby pots in the backyard as they deserved the glorious sun. But spring was far from arriving with winds cold and COVID19 had filled up every piece of my brain space. They were forgotten.

Later that month on a clear night, I poured myself a rye on ice. Pandemic frenzy was at its peak and I felt unsettled as I stared at the dark night sky before running a warm bubble bath. The vicious cycle of life, death and rebirth was cooking, cleaning and working on my desk and I felt my patience chipping away. I downed my drink quickly to pour another one as a reward for running or maybe self consolation. Nothing less, nothing more. Before I could walk away from the bottle of rye, I noticed the geraniums that I had left outside had shriveled and died. Plants without water is like people without love. They die.

I ran my bath. Sipped my third rye in the warm soap suds. The slight burn of the alcohol in my throat felt similar to scalding hot water against my smooth skin. I needed to feel the heat. Of all of this madness. Of this tirade abuse of pandemic. Of everything that I can never seem to comprehend. Or wordsmith. Articulate….I picked my phone and dialed my mother.

“Mother, what was the name of the red flowers you planted in the backyard?”

“Geraniums. Why?”

“Well….I killed them. They are dead. I put them outside for sunshine but I accidentally killed it instead.” Tears made the candle lit bathtub hazy.

“It’s alright. They will come back. They do. If they are planted with love. Don’t worry.”

Thanks Mummy. That’s all I wanted to hear.

I reached for my scented bath oil.