I’ve never been one for spirit animals. I do have my ideals, certain individuals (either living or dead, either personal to my life or historical figures) that I bounce my behaviors off to keep me in check. Even fictional characters at time can be really wonderful at saying, “Hey, get back in line, punk.” And my 4yo son is steadily gaining traction in teaching me plenty of life lessons. I’ve just never been able to truly get behind our four-legged, finned, or winged friends as teachers. Though I do love animals.
But I’d like to tell you about Marvin.
Marvin is a plant.
And Marvin is something of a marvel.
Marvin only stands about six inches tall with a spray of long, thin leaves sprouting like a firework burst at the top of his stem. So a little like a tiny palm tree. If you were to walk into my house and see Marvin, you’d think he’s brand new. A baby.
But you’d be wrong. Very wrong.
Marvin is around thirty years old. But he doesn’t look a day over five!
Marvin started out his life at my mother-in-law’s house. My wife is forty (shhh, don’t tell her I told you that), and she clearly remembers Marvin from her young teen years and maybe earlier.
Marvin spent the majority of his childhood around my wife’s family, growing into a rather impressive little stand of four main stems, each sprouting numerous tributary stems and each with their very own burst of lush, long leaves. All in all, by the time my wife and I moved out and took possession of Marvin, he stood about two feet tall and took up about that much room in volume all the way around. He was, by all accounts, a happy little forest in a pot.
Then he got sick.
His stems wrinkled and his leaves browned and dropped. Eventually, Marvin was reduced to one stem with a scant tuft of small leaves, but with some care and a repotting into new soil and bigger digs, Marvin recovered and grew two new stems. Over the twelve years my wife and I lived in our condo in Lake in the Hills, Marvin once again flourished and grew into a healthy spectacle. Okay, there was that one unfortunate night we left Marvin in front of an open window in the middle of winter with cold air blowing on him all night, but we don’t like to talk about that.
By the time we moved into our house in Huntley, Marvin was good. Great.
Then “we” happened.
When we moved into our new house, our garage became a staging area for our stuff. Boxes were deposited in there, sorted, and moved in as we set up our home. It was summer and our garage has a window, so we put Marvin on the sill while we went about our lives and, I’m ashamed to admit, with the rush of setting up our new home and continuing to plan our future, we…ummm…forgot about Marvin…until the winter.
We weren’t completely neglectful. We did water him (occasionally), but he we didn’t care for him the way he deserved, and by the time this really sunk in, we assumed it was too late. Marvin was in real bad shape. Real bad. We believed him a goner, and if we didn’t feel so bad, we probably would have chucked Marvin into the trash. Instead, we finally moved him into the house. Gave him new soil, a new pot, and put him in our sunroom.
But he never fully recovered. Not really. He didn’t grow new stems, just continued a very slow, long, singular climb into a one-stemmed plant with a slight droop. For every new leaf he grew, he dropped an old leaf.
Then one day, I noticed his middle was starting to shrivel, and I thought Marvin was coming to an end. So we continued to water him, watching him bend at the shrivel point more and more each day until Marvin finally collapsed.
But Marvin was green otherwise. He looked dead but didn’t look dead. So I attempted something radical. I once again readied a new pot with new soil, then I cut Marvin’s stem off about one inch above the shrivel, and speared him into the new pot, thinking this will never work.
Over the next few weeks, I watered Marvin excessively and kept watch, waiting for him to brown and die, but he never did. Nor did he grow, but he didn’t die. In fact, what was left of Marvin, looked very alive. Stunted but alive.
Then came my son.
As if Marvin hadn’t suffered enough in his life, my son pulled Marvin out of his soil, and I found Marvin, laying across the dirt.
I thought, “Well, that’s it. You’re definitely not going to survive now.” Then I noticed something very peculiar. At the base of Marvin’s stem, where’d I’d cut him off, were quarter-inch-long roots. Two of them.
Marvin, had re-rooted!
Quickly, I replanted Marvin, watered him, and have been watching him ever since. And a few days ago, Marvin began to grow.
I don’t need to end with any clever metaphors. I’m sure you all see it. And I bet most of us could agree that we could learn something from Marvin.
