In consideration of three coincidences

I have two Kalan­choes in my house­plant col­lec­tion. One I have had for almost two years in Feb­ru­ary. Another I bought in Novem­ber. It did not occur strange to me that both were in bloom when I obtained them. I also don’t recall the process my first Kalan­choe went through after it stopped bloom­ing, but the plant looks very dif­fer­ent now than it did when I first got it (I assumed it was an off year for the dear plant). My sec­ond Kalan­choe stopped bloom­ing when I returned from my hol­i­day trav­els. The flow­ers were brown and shriv­eled. Sul­li­van men­tioned that it had died. I took it to the sink and began pinch­ing them off. Then I real­ized I didn’t know any­thing about these plants, so I did some research on the internet.

It turns out Kalanchoe’s are forced into bloom­ing out of sea­son through arti­fi­cial stim­u­la­tion by the com­mer­cial grow­ers. Appar­ently the process is “dif­fi­cult” though I couldn’t find a descrip­tion of exactly what was involved (closely con­trolled cli­mate, I imag­ine). And the result is that the plant will flower once, but is unlikely to flower again. The plants are there­fore con­sid­ered “throw­away” house­plants. How­ever some of the arti­cles say it’s pos­si­ble, since a Kalan­choe will nat­u­rally flower in the spring if left to it’s own devices, for it to bloom again. I trimmed the heads off my plant and made a spot on the table for it to rest dur­ing the winter.

What struck me about this expe­ri­ence, is that even when it’s not in bloom, my Kalan­choes are lovely lit­tle green liv­ing things, and I won­der how many of them are chucked out into the cold once their flow­ers begin to fall.

At the grocery.

Freyja was climb­ing out of the cart, Sul­li­van was run­ning cir­cles around me. The aisles were crammed full of peo­ple doing their shop­ping. I stood in the bread aisle, try­ing to decide which bread to buy.

I did not know which bread to buy.

There were per­haps a hun­dred dif­fer­ent vari­eties. Mul­ti­ple brands, “name brand” and generic, of the same type of bread. White. Wheat. Some mix­ture. Whole grain white. Whole grain wheat. Some com­bi­na­tion. Rye. Raisin. Sour­dough. All pack­aged in col­or­ful plas­tic bags. Why are there so many types of bread in the store? Who buys all these dif­fer­ent breads? Who buys the same bread in dif­fer­ent col­or­ful plas­tic bags? Why are all of these breads made and brought here?

I did not know which to buy.

The kids were ask­ing me to let them ride the mov­ing plas­tic horse in the front of the store. Many peo­ple were mov­ing close to me with their carts full of boxes of things and jars of stuff.

The breads were all bagged in dif­fer­ent col­or­ful bags.

A man was stock­ing the shelves. An older man was ask­ing the bread stocker about the bread. He was com­plain­ing that the brand on sale did not freeze well. That he sus­pected that it was more than a day old.

The bread stocker laughed, “Well I know it’s more than a day old. That’s why it’s all so cheap!”

All of the loaves of bread became Leggo blocks. Every­thing was plas­tic and mul­ti­col­ored. The man stock­ing the bread was a Leggo man. The old man was a Leggo man.

Tears came to my eyes. A Leggo woman with a full cart of Leggo blocks next to me whis­pered, “Are you okay?”

I said, “I don’t know which bread to buy.”

“Don’t stress out about it. Just pick one. They’re all the same, really.”

“Thank you, no.” I whis­pered. A pit grew in my stom­ach. I couldn’t feed my chil­dren plas­tic. I didn’t buy any bread.

The pic­ture above is not mine.

I set an alarm for 2:20 a.m. A time I fig­ured would give me some min­utes to dress, find my coat and cam­era and head out­side to watch the Quad­ran­tid meteor shower. Of course, five min­utes before my cell alarm went off, Sul­li­van ran into my room fright­ened from a night­mare. A few min­utes later, the curi­ous alarm woke him up com­pletely. I told him we were going to go out­side to look at mete­ors, a topic he has some inter­est in (as a dinosaur afi­cionado - have I men­tioned he’s 4?). We bun­dled up and went out into the back yard with our lit­tle dog.

The sky was cloudy and the city lights sent a haze over the moon, but I could see some stars and I could see Mars and what I sus­pected was Venus. I pointed these out to him (he was unim­pressed). After fif­teen or so min­utes, the dog started whin­ing to go inside. Sul­li­van started ask­ing me ques­tions like “Are you sure mete­ors are real?” in the same tone of voice he asks me about fairies, trolls, magic, Santa and the Greek gods I tell him sto­ries about. With the same skep­ti­cism that he asks, “Are you sure this plant is still alive?” With that same look he gives me when I am wip­ing my eyes in the gro­cery store because every­thing is made of plas­tic; his fruit­bat, card-throwing, gypsy mama, who has no answers, this time, but a string of ques­tions and coin­ci­dences that feel con­nected through the ether, ask­ing him to watch some end­less sky in the frigid cold for some mys­ti­cal phe­nom­ena that may not even exist in his world.

We did not see a sin­gle meteor after twenty min­utes, so we came inside, the dog, the boy and I. I put him to bed, but it was per­haps too late. He had trou­ble sleep­ing the rest of the night. I sat at the table, gnaw­ing on my deci­sions, some pit grow­ing in my stom­ach, retelling the entire story to a tired and spent houseplant.