Ode to Spider Plants
The most underrated of pobrecitas
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Oh un-killable monster, oh steadfast and stubborn companion, oh poster child of immaculate conception, you have followed me, haunted me, stressed me out beyond measure all through adulthood, you, with your messy little offspring I have embarrassingly carried from apartment to apartment, because, despite such consternation, it doesn’t feel right to just, like, leave you on the sidewalk, for how could I, given your success at staying alive, no matter what chaos you’ve been subjected to, not to mention all manner of neglect, including, but not limited to, the tap-tap-tap of cigarette ash under your leaves on drunken nights smoking cigarettes by the window, and of course, that time the cat I was sitting tried to eat you.
In springtime, there’s no keeping up. It’s annoying at first, then low-key frightening. I put offers on Instagram, Facebook: “Free spider-plant babies in need of a good home,” and zero people respond. I lean in, tending to you more kindly, watering you consistently so your leaves drop into that deeper green, and so they stretch and reach, and you look so happy, but it’s still true that you resemble that most disconcerting of nature’s creatures, the multi-legged one who I know is helpful but that most of us wouldn’t describe as cute, let alone pretty.
There are some things I love about you. I love how, before a terrible baby emerges, it is preceded by the most gorgeous string of tiny white flowers, yellow centers. I just learned that:
The National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA), which tested the abilities of three common houseplants to remove formaldehyde from the air, found in preliminary tests that spider plants were the champs, removing 95 percent of the toxic substance from a sealed Plexiglas chamber in 24 hours.
I love how you give yourself, how unbothered you are: you know what you are doing, and you simply do it. I love the way you adapt, how you do your best to thrive, regardless of environment: crowded into corners of cluttered tenement balconies; in upcycled coffee cans, dotting the steps of stoops in working-class neighborhoods the world over; hastily hung from awnings every morning when the bodegas wake up, absorbing soot sleet rain snow sun, no biggie; perched on a shelf in a third-floor San Francisco apartment living room, on the receiving end of pointed criticisms from a group of girlfriends sitting on a couch.
From the archives ~ this time last year:
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I always nip the baby-branches as soon as I see them. I feel guilty every time, haha. I also notice how multiple different plants, of different ages and provenances and varietals, will put out babies simultaneously. I like to think there's some kind of plant-communication going on there, through the air, somehow. (It's probably just that the conditions trigger the babies all at once. But I want to believe...!)
Because I used to propagate EVERY SINGLE BABY, I now have so dang many spider plants, many of which are reaching truly epic proportions. I love how they look, how they clean the air, how they thrive on my neglect (which ranges from "benign" to "active").
YESSSSS!! This makes me so happy, also remembering the "zero people responded" line LOL -- I do feel bad about our "pointed criticism" now. Can I have one of your babies?