It’s been really cold in south Texas this week. Honestly, the temperatures don’t have to drop very far before people around here start complaining and the weather personalities on TV start talking about the “bone-chilling cold” outside. But it’s been 20 years since the overnight lows fell into the teens, and even longer since the area saw several days in a row of this kind of cold. I feel completely justified in calling this wintry weather.
I tried to save all the tender plants in my back yard by moving them into the shed. Yesterday, when I went to check on them, the news wasn’t good. My big aloe plant is a puddle of mush in its pot. The hibiscus tree is quite sad and droopy; whether or not the trunk will replace its leaves remains to be seen, but I’m not counting on anything. Same for mandevilla vine. And the things that were planted in the ground—plumbago, esperanza, more hibiscus—are long gone. From what I’ve read online, they can lose their leaves in a frost and still survive, but temperatures this cold tend to kill the root system underground.
I grew up in a place with actual winters, so none of this is unfamiliar territory. I’m accustomed to starting from scratch in the spring; I just haven’t had to do it for awhile, since we’ve had very mild winters for the past few years. But this morning, I was feeling very sad about the loss of the esperanza bush I planted in memory of my friend Linda, who was killed in a car accident last spring. Linda was an avid gardener, and planting a beautiful shrub in her memory seemed like an appropriate gesture.
Well, a little voice in my head said, if you wanted something that would last forever, you should have planted a tree instead of a tropical bush that isn’t cold-tolerant. You can’t be upset when a plant doesn’t do what it’s not equipped to do.
In other words, as St. Exupery writes in The Little Prince, “If I were to command a general to turn into a seagull, and if the general did not obey, that would not be the general's fault. It would be mine.”
Later this morning, my husband was reading an article in the Sunday paper about the construction of Main Plaza in downtown San Antonio. It’s finally complete, after a number of delays—including the deaths of seven red oak trees in last summer’s extreme drought. So, not even trees last forever. Longer than most plants, perhaps, but not forever.
I have to drive past the site of Linda’s accident every day. It happened on the interstate I normally travel to and from my campus. After she died, it took awhile before I could drive through that area without thinking of her, wondering if she saw what was about to happen or if the accident took her completely unawares. But the burn marks in the grass and the skid marks on the highway have disappeared now; sometimes I actually drive home without thinking about the fact that we don’t usually know the last day of our lives is, in fact, going to be the last one. The day after Linda’s accident, I kept thinking things like “If she’d left campus two minutes later, or two minutes sooner, or driven a little bit faster or slower—if she’d done even one thing different, she might still be here now. “
True enough. She might still be here—for awhile longer. But Linda’s death, as it occurred, was no one’s fault. The driver who killed her also died in the crash, as did her teenage son, all three of them victims of a blowout at highway speed. No one was drunk or otherwise impaired. No one was being reckless.
Tires blow up. People die. The weather gets cold, and then it gets warm again. Plants die, and some return in the spring, and others don’t. It’s up to us to choose whether to replant or give up on the things that don’t stick around. Mortal things can only do what they were created to do.
I’ve decided to create an esperanza spot in my back yard. If the bush I planted after Linda’s death doesn’t come back in the spring--well, I’ll plant another in its place. Esperanza is the Spanish word for hope. Linda’s legacy will be the reminder that hope is with me as long as I let it be.
