Hydrangeas and Bright Sadness

A couple of weeks ago, when a friend had to be out of town for ten days, she asked me to go by her place a couple times while she was gone, and water her plants. Just three little potted plants – a hydrangea, a slightly wilted poinsettia, and some other kind of waxy-leafed, fairly sturdy-looking plant – grouped together on a small table by the window in the kitchen. “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

She had been gone a few days when I first stopped by. All seemed well. The poinsettia had lost a few petals, but she had said that it was kind of on its way out, anyway. Poinsettias are notoriously short-lived. So, I gathered up the fallen petals, tossed them into the trash, and gave all three plants a drink of water. Once that was done, I looked around to make sure all else seemed well. Satisfied that it was, I locked the door and left.

I have a few houseplants in my home. Six – no, seven of them, to be exact. Two are day lilies (that haven’t bloomed in a long while), two are what are called “mother-in-law tongue” (I am not making that name up), one is a small philodendron, one a corn plant (that bears no corn), and the other is some hardy, uh… maybe palm family member? That one doesn’t need much water. Actually, ALL of my plants do all right without much water. And by “all right,” I suppose I mean that they are green – vastly more green than brown. Which I take to mean they are fine.

My mother (Mrs. Green Thumb, herself), however, when she comes to visit, is absolutely appalled at the state of my plants. Anyone who knows anything about plants knows that all of the plants I listed above are some of the sturdiest, hardest-to-kill varieties available. Philodendrons, corn plants, and mother-in-law tongue are all over the place in office buildings, because they can survive in dim fluorescent lighting, with sporadic watering or fertilizing. And I have to say, MY plants at my house are, for the most part, almost unrecognizable even as the same types of plants as those found in office buildings. That is because, in actuality, I neglect my plants to the point of their near demise. They are dim reflections of what their plant types were meant to be. I do realize this, when I see their healthy counterparts out in the world. But my plants stay (mostly) green, so… I dunno. I just leave well enough alone. And when they start to wilt and shrivel, visibly begging for attention, I can just splash a bit of water on them, and overnight – I’m not even kidding… literally, OVERNIGHT – they just perk right back up again (especially the day lilies). So forgiving, those plants. They don’t hold a grudge. They spoil me, really.

So. Five or six days go by, and I figure I should swing by my friend’s place again, give them one more drink of water so they’ll be good to go when she gets home. So then, you can understand my horror when I find that the hydrangea looks BASICALLY DEAD. We’re not talking wilted. We’re talking leaves-dropped-off, those that remain looking very brown and crunchy. Nothing green about it, really. Even the poinsettia held up better than that. The other, unidentified plant was fine. Somewhat dry soil in its pot, but fine. Oh, but the hydrangea! I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what to do. So, I cleaned up the crunchy leaves and petals from the little table, and tossed them in the trash. Then, knowing I had to somehow acknowledge this crime against plant-hood that I had committed, however unwittingly, I fashioned a little sign out of some thin cardboard (the back of the small pad of notepaper), and I shakily wrote with my left hand (I’m right-handed) the words: “AHNA KILLD ME” onto the piece of cardboard, and I perched this little confession/self-accusation in a crook amongst the hydrangea stems. Then I locked the door, and left.

A couple days later, after my friend had gotten home, we talked on the phone, and I was able to tell her, “I am SO SORRY about your hydrangea!” And she said, “Oh, well… I had gotten it at Easter a couple years ago, so I was a little sorry to see it go…” And so of course, I felt even more like crap about it. And I mentally planned to buy her a new one.

But the next day, I was over at her house, and she said, “Look, I re-potted it! And when I took all the dried leaves off, I saw THIS!” And she pointed to the base of the plant, and there – what do you know – was a distinct green shoot of new growth beginning to happen. “So,” she said,” I’m just going to see what happens here, and hope for the best.”

Fast forward a week. My friend and I talk on the phone last night. “Hey,” she said. “I thought you’d want to know that my hydrangea is doing pretty well. That green part is growing, and I think it’s going to make it.” I could hear the smile in her voice. “It meant a lot to me to see that,” she said, “and I thought, maybe it would mean something to you, as well, in light of recent circumstances.” (She knows all my “life stuff,” good and bad, and that there had been a bit of “bad” dealt out lately.) And I had to smile, too, as her metaphor dawned on me.

Today. Ash Wednesday. The beginning of the liturgical season of Lent. In the Orthodox tradition, Lent is referred to as the Bright Sadness. It is the season leading up to Easter, and it is the season in which we acknowledge the depth of our inward darkness – our sin. And it is right to mourn that darkness, and the darkness that still afflicts all of humanity. And yet, we grieve our contributions to the world’s sorrows, and acknowledge that “from dust we have come, and to dust we shall return,” knowing that we are headed towards the gladdest of all days, when we mark triumph over all sorrow and death forever, because of Christ’s work on the cross. We shed tears, and we laugh, by turns. Sometimes together.

The Bright Sadness.

The “dead” hydrangea plant – that, even now, is whispering a green, green secret to the world.