Plant Motherhood

For my birthday back in 2020, amid the chaos and uncertainty of Covid, a good friend of mine gifted me a snake plant. She knew I’d just moved into my first NYC apartment and wanted to give me something to liven it up. I named the plant Paul, for the alliteration. Paul the plant, duh.

Plant motherhood is seemingly the first step in a long line of motherhood experiments. Maybe a dog comes next; maybe a whole human child. But at the start, you bless your life with a hearty, green thing that’s nearly impossible to kill, at least according to Google.

I was ready for the challenge of keeping a plant alive, no matter how easy it was promised to be. No offense to those who I know are reading, but I do not come from a family of green thumbs. I was prepared to do whatever it took (whatever the internet told me) to keep Paul thriving amid the overwhelming urban sprawl of NYC.

For a while nothing changed. I was watering him once every two weeks, as instructed by the snake plant aficionados online. I trusted them with Paul’s life. But eventually, another tiny green stalk appeared in the soil beside Paul. I excitedly told my real, human family that Paul had had a baby.

Here’s the way it works: Paul has a baby; this baby grows to be as tall as Paul; Paul and the baby become one Paul. Because you see, eventually it becomes hard to tell which part of Paul was the original and which part came later. My sisters don’t like the idea of Paul spawning in the comfort of my little bedroom. He gives them Audrey II vibes. But each time Paul has another baby, I marvel at the fact that what I’ve been doing to keep him alive has been more than enough.

After a few months of having Paul, he’d had two babies, so I decided to move him out of the pot he came in, into a larger trough-like planter where he and his babies could have room to grow and become one. This was the beginning of Pauls’s age of prosperity. He had several more babies over the next many months.

Last spring, for the first time in his life, Paul flowered. And again this year. When the flowers first appeared I was bewildered, having not read anything about snake plants growing flowers. But there Paul was, amazing me again at his resilience. Only one drink of water every two weeks, year round, and he was thriving.

But these past few weeks have been tough for Paul. Whereas last year three or four of his stalks flowered, this year, only one did. And I noticed that one of his tallest bits was a bit off-color. Two weeks ago, after his leaves started drooping, I had to uproot one of Paul’s original stalks, which had died while its siblings grew alongside it. And then this past week, I had to remove another piece of Paul from the planter.

But not all hope is lost. The planter might right now look a little sparser, but over the last few weeks, Paul has had two more babies that prove he is still healthy and growing and that the space left by his fallen comrades is soon to be filled.

Paul is much like the Ship of Theseus. If you keep removing parts of Paul and replacing them with new parts of Paul, is it still Paul? I’d say yes. Whatever sprouts within that planter is Paul, for however long its lifecycle.

This might all seem a little ridiculous to you, but Paul is part of my family. He’s been here with me in my little apartment since I’ve lived in NYC. He’s grown with me, he’s suffered losses with me. He’s flowered and he’s withered and he’s drunk from my various Nalgene water bottles.

There may be greater things in my future, things more complex to care for, but for now, I am enjoying Paul in his green-ness and simplicity. It gives life a little more meaning to know that something cannot grow and thrive without your care.

To all those struggling and loving plant moms out there, I see you. One day, maybe I will be ready to get Paul a plant friend. Until then, I will watch him develop and grow as I do the same. We’re in this together, he and I, as the world changes around us and we adapt to be just two more living things on this island of Manhattan.