The Spaces We Fill

1. I’m peering into the looking-glass in our home’s atrium-garden.

Here nature’s beauty is on display, an array of plants showing-off their colored leaves. Shades of greens, green-green, green-yellow, green-gray, green-silver leaves. Philodendron, calathea, snake, zz, patricia, goldfish. And the croton which is the most colorful plant in the garden, growing taller, proudly shows its randomly mixed greens, also yellows, reds, purples on its striped stiff leathery leaves, a very sturdy and resilient plant as long as it isn’t over-watered. My plants have become children I nurture. Watching them grow, caring for them, just as my husband and I once watched over and cared for our daughter, it is a labor of love.

Croton’s other name is Joseph’s Coat, probably derived from the biblical story of Joseph and his amazingly hot-colored coat to show-off. Singularly splashy, spectacularly sassy, saucy, specially selected for Joseph. Jacob was blinded by his love for Joseph, his favorite son. He didn’t see that he sowed seeds of hatred in the hearts and souls of his other sons toward Joseph. We see these seeds of anger, seeds of jealousy, seeds of frustration, seeds of misery, seeds of unhappiness become seeds of destruction. By contrast there are nature’s seeds which are life-giving, they propagate and become beautiful plants and trees. Philodendron, calathea, snake, zz, patricia, goldfish, croton and the ficus tree.

The ficus tree. Solidly sturdy, hardy and healthy, it is the only tree in our atrium-garden. Also known as the weeping fig with its glossy-green oval leaves, the ficus tree has established itself as the giant overseer, plant-protector, plant-director in our atrium-garden. It spreads its many leaves upward and outward forming a huge U-shape. At its fullest it takes up almost the entire space in the atrium. Two gallons of water each week, fertilized once a month, it thrives. It requires seasonal pruning. When cut back, it is transformed into a V-shape thinned-out version of itself.

2. I was a neophyte in the plant-parenting business.

It’s not hard to remember when I succeeded in killing just about every plant I ever touched. I watered fake-flowers for two years before realizing they thrived only because they were never alive. Then it was the disaster of the begonia plant. Old photos showed this plant in a pink foiled-covered pot sitting on a pretty green and pink chintz-clothed round table leaning to the right, a mini-green architectural rendering of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

Plant photographer and plant-parent have become new parts of my life. They’re much more than hobbies. I am filling unfilled spaces within myself where once I was almost totally disconnected from nature. All this has changed. So many beautiful plants bring life and light into my life, the calathea, known as both the peacock plant and the rattlesnake plant. Zebra plant variety is ours, dark green stripes on lighter colored green leaves; philodendron, its meaning, love of trees; snake plant called mother-in-law’s tongue; zz, eternity plant; patricia, Chinese evergreen. And my goldfish plant, it grows downward in long-wiry-ribbons of tiny leaves, shimmering-shiny green with hints of red. And the goldfish name? Looks like leaping fish because of its long tubular red-orange flowers. Genus name colummea gloriosa, gloriosa strikingly beautiful, impressive. And it is.

3.

We’ve launched our family’s photo project.

Every space in our guest room is filled with piles of photos. Our maiden photographic voyage. My husband and I have no idea when and where we will arrive with our finished album in hand. For our daughter and granddaughter. It’s a labor of love.

My husband is using a new computer program for copying, scanning, cropping, sizing photos to fit into our new fifty-page, ten-photo-slots front and back, a total of five-hundred photos will fit into this album. Photos of great-grandparents, grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles, cousins. Spaces for those presently in our lives. Our daughter, our son-in-law, our granddaughter. Some really fun ones, photos of our daughter at age four 1977, washing her doll, our granddaughter, Zoe, now at age four washing her doll, 2017. And our daughter’s boy-doll which her paternal grandpa, pop-pop, gave her at age two is now Zoe’s. She is learning to velcro-close his jacket. Tying his sneakers will be a much later learned skill. School photos of my husband at age six, 1942, me at age six, 1948. I’m wearing a white short-sleeve blouse, frilly-front, and tucked into my dark skirt is a white handkerchief, the handkerchief a school requirement. My husband is dressed in dark slacks, white long-sleeved shirt and tie. Both eager first-graders.

Our family photos mark life cycle events, births, Bar Mitzvahs, Bat Mitzvahs, high school, college, and graduate school graduations, weddings, and the cycle comes full-circle. We honor the lives of our deceased family members placing their photos in our new album. Our oldest photos go back to the 1800s in Russia. Portraits, some in sepia, some black and white, some have thick backings, one of my mother-in-law as a young girl, her photo is part of the oval metal frame beautifully decorated within a flowered border.

We are filling in the spaces, piecing together stories of our family’s lives, stories we’ve over-heard through other family members, vague recollections of meeting them when we were very young children, some we never knew, they died well before we were born. I’ve emailed and phoned other family members for help. In the traditions of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson, Mr. Keen, tracer of lost persons, Dragnet, just the facts ma’am, newer shows like NCIS and Law & Order, my husband and I use some of their clue-gathering strategies to solve the whos, wheres, whats of their lives.

A magnifying glass helps us identify very small but important clues, a wrinkle, a blemish, a watch-band, details on a necklace, a scarf, a suit, a dress, a hat, sorting them, trying to figure out who’s who, hair-styles, background scenes of our relatives. We guess age by faces, body shapes. Children, teens, young adults, middle-agers, older folks with wrinkles and a cane. What are they carrying? Other clues. We compare the ages of the same people over time. Not perfect, we admit flaws in our efforts, but we are determined to have something important to hand-on to our daughter and our granddaughter. More than our material assets which they will inherit, we will hand-on these photographs and narratives about whom their ancestors were, where they lived, how they lived, and how our lives are connected to theirs.

4. Plant-speak.

It isn’t very different from people-speak. Pay attention. Listen. Monitor. Unscramble their messages. Like with my calathea plant. When I probe its soil at mid-week watering, it is still wet. But some of its leaves are dry and stiff. Plant speak, I’m in distress, I need more water. Four additional cups of water-feedings at mid-week seems to relieve its stress.

Busily unscrambling the who’s who in our family-photo searches we found one photo-card which has the names in Hebrew of my husband’s paternal grandfather, Kaseel or Kutiel, (modern day Hebrew pronunciation), Blatter and great- grandfather, Moshe Ephraim Blatter, long-bearded, seated, wearing a long coat and a kippah, head covering, with Kutiel standing wearing a suit and wide-brimmed hat. There are several dates stated, 1830, 1872, most recently, 1902. Clues we need to further pursue.

5. Gusta Weiner and Ida Pesiaty Weiner. Who were they?

Here I’m looking at a photograph with their names, Gusta and Ida. (Weiner was also my mother-in-law’s maiden name). My husband thinks Gusta and Ida may have been murdered in the Holocaust. But this was never confirmed. Many years ago calls came to his family asking for money for information about lost relatives in Poland. His family never responded. Many times these calls were hoaxes. Sadly people tried to exploit the vulnerable bereaved.

Millions were murdered in the Holocaust. Could this have been the fate of Gusta and Ida?, I asked my husband. Well, we tried to find out. Our visit to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC, in search of information about them, proved futile. But the experience wasn’t. It continues to be emotionally life-changing.

We proceeded through the museum, we viewed the exhibits, we read all the historical information. Then we stopped, shocked, mesmerized by the horror of seeing Holocaust victims’ shoes here on display in huge floor-to-ceiling glass cases, we could not pull ourselves away from this display. Our eyes were fixated in disbelief, our faces almost adhered to the glass, our steamy breaths visible. Gut-wrenching. Parched-throats. Tight-tummies. Tearful- eyes. Holes in our souls. Sadness in our hearts. Stinging shock-waves reverberating throughout our bodies. No matter how prepared we thought we were, we weren’t prepared enough. The horror of it all was in front of us. Asking ourselves the questions so many have asked, how could this have ever happened? Where was God? No answers. Only more questions.

Most painful were the shoes of little children who never had a chance to take their places in life. Robbed of being before they could barely speak. Just because they were Jews. Also, some murdered for being gypsies, homosexuals, and dissenters. Baby white-laced shoes, wrinkled brown leather, soles, many with holes, black shoes, heeled shoes, tied shoes with tattered laces, great-grandparents’ shoes, parents’ shoes, aunts’ and uncles’ shoes, neighbors’ shoes, butchers’ shoes, bakers’ shoes, grocers’ shoes, rabbi’s shoes, all their partly-lived lives left behind in shoes. Ashes, no grave-sites. Just shoes.

6. Death. 

Exit only. No re-entry door.

We mortals all, we will all die. Me, too.

My mother was the last of our four parents to die. Losing a mother is not the same as losing anyone else. It’s hard to put into words what mother-daughter visceral wiring is. My mom's famous words, I can smell you. Meaning she always sensed where I was and how I was feeling.

My mother was always at my side, no matter where I was or what I needed. From my birth in 1942 to her death in 1986 she was next to me. When the hospital chaplain greeted us at the hospital at 4 AM on that freezing cold January morning, I knew mom's life's journey had come to its end. Icy-cold chills flooded my body. Bereft of her presence, the hole in my life has remained. 

I saw her. She was lying in a hospital bed. She looked alive. She was dead.  Whatever I wanted to tell her, it was too late. Whatever amends I wanted to make for my selfishness, it was too late. From now on, I could only communicate with her at her grave-site.

7.

A conversation with mom...at her grave-site.

I will gather and place rocks around her marker, marking her grave, a Jewish custom. Hopefully she’ll sense my presence. I will say, I’m here, Mom. I love you. What she couldn’t say, I filled in. I love you, too, preciosa de me vida (precious of my life). Tears will stream down my face. Drip, drip, droplet by droplet.

I’ll read her the Hebrew prayer, the Kaddish prayer. Then I’ll give her gifts of plants like a few philodendron, their colors green and yellow-green to create a sense of calm and peace, and a calathea plant with some darker plain green leaves and some zebra-striped leaves to add decorative interest and uniqueness. And the last plant gift, a patricia, I’ll put on her grave-site for its longevity. Like the calathea, it grows rapidly and tall so one should suffice. 

8. Legacy.

Now I can tell our granddaughter about her great-grandmother. And about all the people in our lives for several generations who have loved us, nurtured us, given us strong, safe foundations, and helped us make our ways into adulthood, through these photos and narratives— fragments of our lives we have pieced together and share with her. And we can encourage her to tend her own garden.

Filling in the spaces, these unknowns, that’s our mission.