The Altar

Eggshell potted plants, bhg.com

DAWN AT MIDDAY

If I were going to live here – and to all appearances,

I was, the heap of luggage at my feet attesting to

the fact – then there would need to be a very lot of

plants, I thought. In my experience, a few lush,

hardy pothos were the ticket: instant ambience and

simple propagation – cuttings in a jar of water,

nothing to it. Pothos thrive that way, requiring

hardly any light and not a bit of fuss. I set them side

by side or cluster them in corners. Right away they

are the best of friends. You see it in the sweet (and

shy at the beginning) twining of their stems. They

show up better, too, in bunches. Shiny leaves and

sturdy, twisty vines attract the eye and give a dusky,

timid space vitality. Thus, with this simple show of

domesticity, I stake a claim: This is my place.

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I spot a sunny window and I feel like it’s my

birthday. Every home must have a few, to ward off

melancholy. Dark moods brighten in the company

of pots of jaunty herbs along the narrow boundary

between inside and out. To bridge the separation,

hang a pothos overhead and dust the leaves with

regularity. Be sure to note the time of day when

first the bravest rays begin to brush the foliage,

much the way a mother strokes her baby’s face...

and let the moment be a regular appointment so

you don’t forget to stop and sit and watch

habitually, in awe of what you’re witnessing, the

sacred intimacy of it.

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Try not to think too much about the photosynthesis

that’s going on. It fascinates, but this is an

exchange of love between the earth and sky you

look upon, and the display is brief... a micro-dawn, a

silent prayer that can be only now observed. One

cannot help but worship then the Power that upon

the first encounter stirred a need to place green,

growing things upon a kind of altar. One might be

alone, but here, by grace and some strange

alchemy, is home.

Pothos (rhymes with MAH dose) is a popular houseplant for a number of excellent reasons. Officially Epipremnum aureum (E. aureum), pothos was once classified within the genus Pothos. Imagine that! Pothos is not related to the philodendron though it is often mislabeled as such.

Other names for pothos are

·   golden pothos

·   money plant

·   silver vine

·   centipede tongavine (Don’t you love how those words roll off the tongue?)

·   devil’s ivy

·   Solomon Islands ivy

NOT A SALAD INGREDIENT. Practically the only downside to pothos is toxicity to people, especially small children, and to pets. I checked several sources and found no mention of its ever having been fatal. Chewed or eaten, pothos can, however, cause “oral irritation, vomiting, and difficulty swallowing” (Wikipedia). North Carolina State University plant scientists warn that ingesting any part of the pothos in large amounts “causes severe pain in the mouth.”

LET’S CLEAR THE AIR. Pothos is one of the best “air-cleaning” houseplants, which are surprisingly effective in absorbing common indoor pollutants, including carbon dioxide and volatile organic compounds (trichloroethylene, benzene, toluene, xylene, and formaldehyde, for example). Plants won’t help much, if at all, with tobacco smoke or dust.

There was a time when I aggressively sought out information about harmful stuff. As a mother of young children, I was hyperprotective until I figured out that, although obsessively scrubbing potatoes might make them safer to eat, it was making me overly earnest and tense, a fact not lost upon the potatoes, which tasted bitter as a consequence. Food, I discovered, has more flavor when it’s handled sensibly and there is laughter in the room. I adopted the maxim that, in terms of household health practices, laughing is better than scrubbing.

If you’re a person who likes to know which ordinary substances and objects are pumping toxins into your living space, the answer appears to be “most of them”:

• particleboard, pressed-wood items, carpet backing, adhesive binders for floor coverings, insulation
• wrinkle-resisters, water-repellents, fire-retardants, cleaning solutions
• plastics, found everywhere but more problematic in tightly sealed new construction, where synthetic carpeting, laminated counters, and plastic-coated wallpaper are standards
• many types of ink, paint, lacquer, varnish, adhesives, oil
• paper products (including grocery bags, tissues, paper towels)
• gasoline stored in basement or garage; vehicle-exhaust fumes from outside

For effective indoor-pollution control, allow one houseplant per 100 square feet. To prevent mold, don’t overwater and do provide adequate air circulation and ventilation.

Native Soil

There She Is

Karen was a woman who wore stylish
linen suits to work and chunky turquoise

jewelry sometimes or a string of pearls

and navy T-shirt dress whose hem would

skim the floor, but for the three-inch

heels she wore; and she adorned her
office and herself with clever pieces from
boutiques — a long silk scarf in pink pastel

tossed on with casual elegance, one turn

around the neck above a crisp, white
cotton shirt and Levi’s... plain clay
saucers, different sizes, meant to set your
plant pots on, were coasters,
paperweights, and places to put odds and
ends... and sturdy woven baskets, long
before the world discovered them, wore

large, neat labels: “Out” and “In.”

She always took the summers off — her
husband was the Dean of Men — they had
“a little place” somewhere in Ireland, it
might have been a castle or a pub. She
loved it, that was all I knew, and though
she lived with such élan and dressed with
flair and ingenuity and didn’t care what
anybody thought, and was so kind and
always took me to the symphony and then
for drinks at Hickory’s to celebrate my
birthday, and adored ballet and was a
friend of Balanchine and once, at least, I
know she went to Moscow for a
weekend... not that she was ever sickly, I
don’t think she missed a day of work in
fifteen years, but toward the end of May
she’d summon up, from God knows where,
this superhuman energy and raucous joy,
and, “There she is,” I’d think, though I
could not have told you what was missing.
It’s as if you’ve never seen a flower, and a
coral-tinted rosebud shows up one day at
your door;
you’re overcome;
you vow to
treasure it forever,
and the morning after,
all its petals have unfolded and you stare
in wonder at it: “There was more?” you
say in bafflement. And that was Karen, all
at once unfolding like a rose.

There are those who never grow quite as
they should except in native soil, and I
suppose when Karen first met Ireland,
there was sudden recognition, something
like immediate addiction to a sense of
place she’d not have felt the lack of till
she had it. I confess I’ve felt the tug of it
myself, from elsewhere, who can say? I’ve
yet to learn. It happens when the sun is at
a certain slant, the trees throw shadows
out, just so, and something beckons in the
wind, a scent, a sound, except I don’t
know which direction it would have me go,
but, oh, I yearn for it and grieve as if I
know the thing I’m grieving for, and all this
in the time it takes to breathe one breath,

inhale, exhale, and while you’re at it have

a brief encounter with a universe outside

of time and space where words are

weighty and irrelevant. But it’s the poet’s

job to make the poem speak if not the

words, and so: There is a place I’m meant

to be and it will find me or I’ll stumble

over it, and then I’ll know that I’ve come

home.

(And no, it isn’t death or heaven, not as

strong as premonition, not as vague as

funny feeling, not an ache but more a sort
of itchiness, as if I were a migratory bird,
instinctively aware of season, storm, and
course; a kind of magnetism, I suppose,
and only wish I knew which way is north.)