The Roots of This House

 I look around and see color scattered across the floors and walls, small flashes defying the green that dominates my home. Pink, yellow, orange, green. They shift constantly, changing with the light and turning the rooms into something almost dreamlike. And the strange thing is that, if I close my eyes, I feel exactly the same way inside. There is something beautiful about watching my surroundings glow in a way that somehow resembles the way my spirit is glowing now.

The last time I propagated my plants, there were already more than fifty of them in the house. Every time I cut a leaf, refill the fertilizer, mist them with water, give them light, or water them carefully, something happens quietly beneath the soil. The roots move forward. They divide, search for space, hold on to whatever they find. I wonder how many miles of roots there are inside this house. I like the thought of being surrounded by all that invisible life, of knowing that while I am busy doing other things, something is slowly growing beneath every pot. In a way, caring for plants means helping life make its way forward while becoming a spectator to time.

And yet, while I help so many things put down roots, there is still a part of me that does not want to grow any of my own. Although another part already has. It is the part that recognizes the San Diego air the moment the airport doors open and thinks: I’m home. The part that watches the ground rise toward the plane during descent and feels something close to relief. But there is another part of me too, the one that wants adventure, that imagines moving to the Carolinas with Kobe and learning to play the ukulele simply because I can. I suppose I am learning not to force either of them to win.

I am finding a beautiful kind of balance inside this pace that many people would probably call unhealthy. This insane rhythm of wanting to devour months as though they were minutes, of drinking down light-years with the same urgency with which I have lately been drinking in experiences. Maybe it is not really about choosing between putting down roots and continuing to move. Maybe some roots are not there to keep you still, but simply to remind you where you are growing from.