Great Uncles & Roots (TinyLetter Archive)

Dear You,

Somewhere there is a picture. I'm standing next to the pool at my Great Aunt & Uncle's house next to a girl I was friends with as a kid (was she a distant cousin?). I'm 9 or 10, at the absolute height of my pudgy and awkward phase, which, let's be honest, I still haven't entirely grown out of. I'm wearing my swimteam bathing suit, black with yellow edging, and there's some kind of floaty or balloon animal or something ridiculous on my head. If I knew where the picture I was, I would certainly give you specifics, but all I've got is this vague sense of ridicularity™. The photo is super bright from the bright Texas sun, and I am squinting next to my friend Kaley or Kylee or whatever her name was. There were no lakes or rivers in Midland, so knowing someone with a pool was a real coup. We had oodles of birthday parties there where we would hang out and eat really terrible gluten-free cake and cookies (because my cousin had allergies) and drink Blue Sky soda from the co-op (that's right: my mom was a member of a food co-op in the EIGHTIES). All of which was kind of disappointing as a kid, but the cold water made up for it. It was also nice because as a young girl with body issues, there's a sense of safety in being able to have fun around family and not have the added pressure of risking swimsuit embarrassment around kids from school.

Something I've realized only in the last few days is that my Great Aunt & Uncle were better grandparents to me than my dad's parents. The Abel grandparents were generous with money but very strict and not anything resembling fun. I loved them of course, but they weren't the kind of people and didn't have the kind of home where a child could feel welcome. My Aunt Billie & Uncle Sam, though, loved having us around. My Uncle was the first photographer I knew. He was the man who would pull a quarter out of a child's ear and make them giggle with delight. Or when taking family portraits, he'd say "think of your sweetie!" or "say shopping!" in this ridiculous sing-song voice that made it impossible not to laugh. He had huge ears and tall gray hair; he was a living, breathing caricature. He was kind of the pinnacle of silly. Every year for decades, he and my aunt would send out Christmas cards with a picture of the two of them skiing or on jet-skis at the lake, waving at the camera—in their 50's, 60's, 70's.

A couple of weeks ago, my mom told me that Sam wasn't doing very well. He's been having trouble for a while, but wouldn't take time off from his studio to rest. The doctors said recently that he probably had about a month to live. Sam was very pleased when I went into photography and offered to let me use his equipment and hoped that I would one day take over his studio. Sadly, I've never been the studio portrait type. Even in college when we had our own studio at the university to use with lights and backdrops and great friends and classmates to serve as models, I felt all creativity leave me when faced with that white or gray blankness. Using a light meter and an 18% gray card was kind of my hell. Nonetheless, the man has always had my respect. For decades, he's taken every senior portrait in Midland.

Not long after I got the news about Sam, his wife, Billie, took some pain or anxiety pills that may have been expired, and they found her unconscious. She was in a coma for days. They said there was no brain activity. They were discussing when to pull the plug. And on Easter—whether because the doctors are people of faith, I don't know—they decided to see if she could breathe on her own. And she did. The word miracle was used a lot. Now that a week has passed, it's clear that there is permanent damage, and they're moving her into an assisted living place. My parents were here this weekend visiting me and we spent yesterday with the only two members of my mom's side of that generation still living: my grandfather's two youngest brothers. One of them (who has a citrus and plant business/farm south of here) spoke of the terrible boyhood chore of milking the cow every morning. When he was finished, he'd have to take the sealed gallon down to the creek and lower it into an open barrel, where the water would rush over it for hours. Then they'd retrieve it and skim the layer of cream off the top to have with their coffee later. He spoke of dropping out of high school in 10th grade to join the Navy. He came back from the recruitment office with a letter that he had to get signed by his mother. The whole time he spoke, I looked at him and saw my grandfather's nose and Choctaw skin. His grandson ran through the room and someone yelled Russell, slow down! My grandfather's name.

After lunch, we piled into a couple of golf carts with my cousin, who's a couple years younger than me and works with his dad, and we drove over to the lab across from the greenhouses. He seemed to understand I needed to be somewhere cooler, and it was already climbing toward 90. It looked like an unassuming trailer, but inside is where they develop clean plant cuttings from almost the size of spores. He explained, too, how they got rid of viruses, but I couldn't remember that if I wanted to. We took our shoes off in a kind of mudroom off from the landing. Everything was white. Then we went through another room and closed that door too. Then into the last room. Thousands of tiny plastic containers of roots and green branching plantlets were stacked on industrial shelves by week. Clean air was circulating at 1100 pounds per minute. On one shelf, the plants would be the size of a nailhead in a test-tube. In another, a few tendrils maybe an inch long in a plastic to-go container with a date written in Sharpie. Another shelf full of plants where those tendrils are starting to look like ball moss with an earlier date. Fluorescent lights beaming pure white down above each shelf. The floor cold under our bare feet. And on the last shelf at the end, the clusters of green tendril had gone pale brown at the bottom, rhizomes beginning to form, ready to be transferred into pods in the greenhouse, ready for sun and outside air. Ready for the world. To root.

Of course there's a metaphor here. Something which I think I needed desperately yesterday. I needed to see those naked specks in the test tubes and the rhizomes forming, and to think on new life when all around me, so much seems intent on moving the opposite direction. This week I travel to two cities in two different states for two days of interviews and sample teaching. It is my hope that this is the last time I make this type of journey for a good long while, and that along the way, I find a place to get rooted—I find my place.

Yours,
The Ponderous Plantlet

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