I want to stop looking at things and letting my first thought land on my desire to replace them. This old TV for instance. I just sat to spend time on my couch for the first time in weeks, and my first thought as I reached for the remote was “I can’t wait to get my flat screen TV.” I could see it hanging from the wall. It would be bigger, but take up less space. I could get a new hutch for under the tv. Something wood, maybe…
But I love this old TV, with her vertical raster laugh lines, and her thick heavy frame. My high school bestie, turned post-undergrad roommate and I bought it from her brother 8 years for half of its original price when we moved into our first apartment. She had already lived a whole live in Oscar’s family room before us. When I moved back home with my parents at 27 she became the first tv that has ever been mine. This old Samsung has witnessed me at every stage of my independence, from a 25 year old fledgeling in her 8th floor apartment, to a woman returned home, confined to the space of her teenage bedroom. And she’s here with me now, the first tv that’s ever been solely mine in the first living room that’s ever been solely mine.
In fact, she and Priscilla came up together. Priscilla, my Dieffenbachia, was gifted to me by my mother when someone in her office had given up on her. She was my first rehab plant. Priscilla flourished in my apartment, and enjoyed the company of my father’s plant room for four years when I moved back home.
I thought I might die the day Priscilla snapped under the weight of her own crown. She was given to mw on makeshift supports, and I thought the fancy plant sticks I bought to hold her up would remedy her trunk ailment. She’d grown to nearly my height on the fancy supports. My father placed her broken trunk in a bucket full of water and eventually she grew tall again. She sprouted little babies who have since grown pretty tall, too. Priscilla needed to break, to grow a thicker trunk that would support her large and luscious leaves. She is now more full and more beautiful than ever. She’s a big sister to 72 other plants in my home, just as regal as she wants to be.
I’m grateful for this moment on my couch, in my house, with my things that I’ve collected along the way, as I grew into the kind of woman who names her plants.
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