Tiny Messages of Hope

Waves of tension and an overwhelming sense of disaffiliation are washing across the nation. Political strife, an international epidemic, and the constant fear of economic collapse distort vision making everything look ugly. Hard times in the land of plenty.

I need a haircut, so I look awful. I can’t go to the gym so I feel awful, too. The news is filled with outrage and anger. I can’t go anywhere or do anything. A trip to the grocery store is as close as I come to vacation and all we have left to talk about is what we’re going to have for dinner.

And as if that weren’t enough, winter has come to Central Ohio. Almost every day I have to shovel the walks and driveway and spread salt on thick sheets of ice that are too hard to shovel.

I’ve always thought one of the big questions was; is there life after death? Now, I’m beginning to wonder if there is life before death. Winter has come in so many ways.

Before Christmas my wife bought two small Venus flytraps (Dionaea muscipula) at the grocery store, apparently, they are popular gifts in central Ohio. According to my sources (actually my source, singular, who happens to be my co-worker, who has a young son and has bought a couple of Venus flytraps), the protocol is as follows. Buy a Venus flytrap, let it die, next year buy another one.

There was something magical about the little plants, tiny green leaves growing with grim determination from a wild shock of mossy green/brown grass in little plastic, terra cotta colored pots. It was hard to believe these innocent, frail wispy plants could ever be big enough to turn carnivorous. In an odd way they were beautiful, at least to me, at least today.

My history with plants is tragic. They die early, horribly, too much water, not enough water, burned, frozen, eaten by insects, or ground squirrels, or knocked over by winds and left to roll around the patio, I am Cardinal Ximenes and spring and summer are my inquisitions. As I walk through the neighborhood people cross themselves and rush their potted flowers inside. But, I felt good about the flytraps. I was going to see my little plants eat one of those buzzing, irritating houseflies this summer, or die trying, more accurately, kill them trying.

Though Venus flytraps are dormant this time of year, at least in Ohio, at least according to the website we decided to follow. They still grow a little and require an amazing amount of distilled water, they soak it up. We cut the bottoms off of water bottles and set their planters in them. We keep the bottles filled with water, so they can soak it up, just like the swamps of the Carolinas where they originated. When we run the dishwasher we set them in front of the vent so they can enjoy the steam. It has become an obsession. I’ve even started snapping pictures of them each time we run the dishwasher to track the progress, kind of like pencil marks on a door jamb.

On Sunday we ran out of distilled water and I volunteered to face the cold weather, the novel coronavirus, and the treacherous road conditions to nurture our little charges.

I masked up, gloved up, grabbed my hand sanitizer and braved the bitter cold and crazed drivers. One car had run a red light and smashed into another car, pushing it into a tree, police, fire trucks an ambulance and a tow truck flooded the intersection with bright, flashing lights. Insane flashes of blue, red and yellow bounced off the grey piles of snow. It could have been a scene from Mad Max, there was so much detritus laying across the intersection.

In the parking lot at the supermarket, everything looked gray and dead. All of the snow had been scraped onto a few islands of landscaping and stunted, sparse, patchy pine trees. They were probably intended to add a little beauty to the blacktopped car park. It doesn’t work, even when they are clean, but with piles of filthy snow it looks ugly, an affront to nature.

Inside the store, it was even worse. It had been consumed by Super Bowl pregame shopping madness. A disease that infects normally sane people. It’s a fever that drives them to rush to the store, load carts with beer, soft drinks, bags of potato chips, big plastic tubs of cheese puffs (one of my favorite delicacies), and giant platters of meats and cheeses that would have provisioned a large European village in the 14^th century. They are willing to stand in long lines for a long time and spend hundreds of dollars to crowd into small places and risk infection to celebrate the most American of spectacles, commercial television.

All I wanted was a bottle of distilled water. Fortunately, I found a way around the long lines and crazed football fans on their way to a semi-private super spreader event. I went into the liquor store-bought a bottle of bourbon and a bottle of distilled water, so we all had something to drink.

Since the outbreak of Covid-19, we have to use the north door to enter the store and the southern one as an exit. So I had a different view, but, the parking lot was just as bleak as before, filled with monochrome depression. Cars all had road salt splashed over the sides, and looked mangy and leprous. Off in the corner of the lot two police cars were communing and it looked predatory and malevolent. They might have been saying prayers or talking about the coming game but on top of all the ominous portent of the day, it made my skin crawl. And, I really began to question the wisdom of raising flytraps. It was a fool’s errand.

As I walked past a big, black, SUV, there was a little Honda. It was dented, a little scratched and almost tiny. But, it was covered in post-it notes and had balloons tied to the door handles.

The owner of the car had graduated midterm or was getting married or had a birthday, something good had happened, I didn’t really care what it was. It was the simple act that so many of her/his coworkers had stood in the cold and planted congratulatory post-it notes all over the car. It brought a tear to my eye. It was a simple thing, but I had to imagine the delight as the person walked out after their shift and saw the bits of paper pasted all over. I kind of hoped the big SUV would still be there to add to the surprise.

Life is filled with ups and downs, and it’s easy to lose hope, but it’s easy to find it too. We need each other, all of us, one big family. I don’t know why they made the effort to decorate the little car, I didn’t look, the reason didn’t really matter. It was the friendship and joy that made the scene so wonderful.