How the Grinch Stole a Plant

Suki the Plant. (Credit: Fernanda Sanchez)

I brought Suki the succulent home on a foggy and rainy afternoon in late October.

The Sustainability Society of St. Thomas University in Fredericton, N.B., was holding a plant sale fundraiser on campus, and, against my better instincts, I was going shopping. With the eastern Canadian winter about to set in, I had decided to bring something green and growing into my apartment.

I come from a long line of women gardeners, which, for some reason, seemed to have ended with me. Even though I have a history of plant-killing instead of plant-growing, I wanted something to look forward to as I count down the days until graduation.

I grew up in a country with year-round summer, where plants and flowers of every colour decorated most homes in my neighbourhood. When I turned two, my parents moved to the suburbs to escape the noise and pollution. My mom, however, had two conditions for building a new home brick by brick: she would have a kitchen overlooking the garden and a garden wide enough to fulfill her landscaping visions.

Our front garden had an entryway lined with hydrangea bushes, their blooms ranging from pinkish red to soft crimson hues. Next to the hydrangeas was a classic-tiered fountain, which became the focal point of my mom’s garden. And just before entering the house, bamboo shelves and tree-branch-shaped stands held all kinds of cacti. I was surrounded by plants that survived Nicaragua’s dry and rainy seasons, and my mom’s impulse to grow something new in our garden increased with time, whether it was oregano, basil, or snake plants.

One of my mom's cacti in our garden in Nicaragua. (Submitted by Miurel Rayo)

After attending my regular morning class, I walked across campus to the plant sale, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was the one. What came next, I could never have expected.

The plant sat in front of me, somewhat familiar. Its leaves were tongue-shaped and speckled with small whitish spots, stretching from a thick, sturdy base. I was almost afraid to touch it, worried I’d jinx it before deciding to take it home. Its stem was barely noticeable, and the pointed leaves made it look like a tiny, resilient baby plant. It was a succulent, the kind my mom talked about countless times. I’d seen her care for them in our garden back in Nicaragua. A small piece of home, I thought.

The student who sold me the baby succulent for $5 was probably scared of me by the end of the sale. I interrogated her until she told me to Google it. I had questions. How many times a week should I water it? How much water should I use? How will I know if it’s growing? How will I know if I’m doing everything right?

I brought the succulent home and placed it on my desk, where the morning sun peeks through my semi-sheer beige curtains. My first concern was the temperature of my room. I hadn’t considered that I had to keep the room at a normal level, instead of letting it freeze for energy saving purposes – it might be an unexpected long-term investment to keep my plant alive, putting aside my record history of letting plants unattended for long periods of time.

This is what I learned about succulents: Succulent comes from the word “sucus,” which means juice or sap. But my plant is not just any regular “sucus juice,” it’s a Gasteria. Gasteria is a genus of succulent plants, native to South Africa and the far south-west corner of Namibia. Gasteria pillansii has thick tongue-shaped leaves and has a striking inflorescence. Its flowers curve like small stomachs and grow into two opposite ranks, forming a spiral.

The water stored in the plant's leaves enables the succulent to survive for weeks without water. At least one question was answered. Also, succulents have a natural sunscreen, which protects them from the sun and keeps their leaves from burning if they get too much light.

I was worried. I couldn’t leave the plant on the window because it would get cold, and succulents do their best in hot and dry conditions, not New Brunswick’s October weather. That eerie Tuesday twisted into a strange kind of riddle, one that only a small miracle from nature could solve — something to press nature’s purpose into my system.

I’m not a plant person. In fact, in my 21 years, I have let most of the plants under my care die. It’s not that I don’t care about nature, but I would prefer to sit in the comfort of being a mere observer.

I knew I was meant to be an observer ever since elementary school, when they appointed me to take care of a plant and nurture it.

The textbook from my fifth-grade natural science class was probably the heaviest in my book bag. My mom would always remind me to pack it, as I always forgot it at home. My natural science teacher was a strict, middle-aged woman with red, curly hair whom I always associated with Ursula, the villain from The Little Mermaid. She was just as scary, too.

On a rainy, humid day, Teacher Lourdes taught us about photosynthesis. The process by which the plant makes its own food by using sunlight, water and carbon dioxide. Sitting next to the class clown, I found it hard to stay. The classroom was U-shaped, so instead of rows, all my classmates faced each other. It felt leaderless, almost like communism for kids.

The classroom had a skylight, and beside me on the right, a small garden. Teacher Lourdes handed out germinated sunflower seeds in tiny plastic bags, and I knew that was it – I was officially responsible for keeping my first-ever plant alive for display in our miniature Marxist Garden.

My seed and I bonded on a long school bus ride, a preview of our future relationship; bumpy. I left it on our dining table, not the garden or the front porch, where it might receive sunlight. I was far more invested in my afternoon cartoons than remembering that plants need the sun to produce their own sugar and eventually, live. It was my first mistake, another preview of my lifelong pattern with plants – consistently detrimental.

It was not only disappointing to me. To my dear mother, it was downright unacceptable.

After coming home from work, my mom spotted my plant sitting on the dining table, deprived of sunlight. How to get away with murdering a plant was not on my fifth-grade syllabus, and neither was surviving my mom’s outrageousness. She took it away from me right there, like a social worker identifying an unfit parent, and I just watched. The plant floated through the living room all the way to my mom’s cacti refuge. My plant was no longer mine, but I knew once I brought it to school, it would be one of the best-taken-care-of plants thanks to my mom.

It’s not like Mother Nature didn’t try to lead me to the natural world; she did, but it still wasn’t enough to make me into a gardener. At my mom’s request, every two Sundays, my brother, my dad, and I drove out of the suburbs to the closest plant nursery in a town called Masaya.

Just a 30-minute ride from my mom’s garden, my dad’s pickup truck pulled over at roadside plant stands and greenhouses on the way to Masaya. After an hour and a half of driving around and comparing prices, my mom usually went back home excited knowing she had enough fertilizer, new ceramic pots and exotic plants to show off in front of the house. Perhaps an unspoken garden competition, I thought.

Because why on Earth would someone go to such lengths for plants?

I was my parents’ first child, or as I like to call it, my parents’ guinea pig. Being the eldest is all trial and error, but it also determines whether a family grows or remains dormant. Dormancy is the term for when a plant stops growing, a natural period of rest in response to unfavourable conditions.

My relationship with my mom flourished and evolved with time, and it took a lot of care, like you would take care of an orchid. When I was a kid, I remember my mom being more affectionate than most moms, but we still had our differences.

When I reached my preteen years, I grew more distant, and when I fully became a teenager, I went quiet. Every Sunday morning, I woke up, and my mom was already working in her garden. Her gardening gloves were moss green with a print of little yellow flowers, and her shovel had a dark green handle. She wore one of my dad’s hats to protect her from the Central American burning sunlight and used a bright yellow watering jug; the whole scene was suburban, picturesque.

The wind ruffled through the tall trees at the edge of the garden, creating a light breeze across the garden. The hydrangeas glowed a deep, vivid red, and the cactus my mom recently brought from Costa Rica stood stiff and threatening, ready to pinch anyone who dared to touch it.

From salvaging my first ever plant from its own doom to now being a protector of our garden. She went from being Mother Nature to our family’s very own Lorax. In my eyes, my mom was now a Dr. Seuss character, a guardian of the Sanchez Forest, regularly facing off against an “Once-leer” who rolled her eyes and frowned every time she saw the Lorax in action. And that Once-leer was me.

Just like the Once-ler, I was distracted by the positives of commercialization and admired the fast-paced environment of urban life. It wasn’t until one summer during quarantine, locked away in my house, that I finally began to understand the appeal of living in the suburbs.

The warm breeze and the smell of fresh air lingered in my mind, and soon I found myself in the Lorax’s Garden — unchaperoned, wandering, taking in every living thing that grew around our home.

Still, I was not ready to fully commit. I was too intimidated, too scared to ruin our communal forest.

So, I did the next thing I knew would get me a step closer to my mom and hand-painted her non-ceramic pots with blue and white paint. I doodled and outlined flowers and leaves. It was like repotting a plant, where you gently lift the plant from its old soil. In this case, I repotted my unjustified fear and placed it somewhere new to keep watering. There was a new place for me in my mom’s strange, not-so-far-away kingdom, as a self-appointed pot artist.

A week had passed, and the succulent in my room was still alive. I intended to water it every Tuesday at the same time, like clockwork. I got home from school at 5:30 p.m., and gave it a small splash of water, just enough. But then I wondered: how do you even measure the line between watering and overwatering? I just trusted the student who told me to water it once every week.

The second week came around, and I thought it was time to name my plant. The name Suki came from one of my favourite singers, Suki Waterhouse. Suki was by my side when I did homework, edited articles, journaled, and Facetimed with my friends. She was the secret keeper, the silent judge, and the victim of my sorrowful nights.

Every morning, she sat idle while my music filled the room, a mix of Old Man Luedecke, a Nova Scotian singer-songwriter, and early-2000s alternative-rock Coldplay. By midweek, she’d be listening to Spanish synth rock. I want to think she liked it since her leaves grew about two centimetres that week.

My plant survived through her second week and stayed alive for the third week. Perhaps music was the key, my music.

In the third week, I watered her again, more like overwatered her. I was terrified I had drowned Suki, all because I assumed I didn’t need the exact measurement she required, about 6.4 ounces of water.

Maybe I needed to sing to her, just like my mom sang Christmas carols to her plants when December came around. My mom’s theory is that her singing brought the plant joy, and once she stopped, the plant got sad, which eventually led to its death.

Being an observer comes with a low cost; you are not burdened with the responsibility of a living thing, nor the emotions once the plant has passed. Instead, you sit in the back and admire the results of others’ work. If having plants meant you could lose something, being an observer didn’t sound so terrible.

At last, I decided to FaceTime my mom for advice.

After three rings, she picked up the phone. She answered with a smile from cheek to cheek. Her makeup had almost come off, and her eyes were sore with faint dark circles under them. She lay on her bed in her work outfit, a flowery red blouse with a black blazer, still on at 7 p.m. Central Standard Time.

Before asking anything technical related to my plant, I asked her why she loved plants so much, a quality of hers I had never tried to understand, until now.

“What a question,” she said. “My love for plants was born from seeing your great-grandmother taking care of her plants. She also loved them.”

My great-grandmother’s name was Ernestina, but we called her Tina.

To my mom, Tina represented nurture and maternal love. She was the inspiration and motivation behind the woman my mom grew up to be. When my mom was young, she was very much on her own. She was the third of four children, two girls and two boys, but her mother always looked after the boys, and her father always devoted his time to the eldest. Tina was there for her when everybody seemed to take her for granted.

However, Tina was the one in the family to tell my mom to spend time with her and see the garden. Together, they would look at all the plants and water them one by one. That’s how my mom got curious about them.

My great-grandmother, Tina, enjoying her time in Costa Rica. (Submitted by Miurel Rayo)

Once my mom got married and had her first garden, she was determined to keep it beautiful, always. Now, in her second house, her garden comes to life with different types of cacti, flowers, and succulents of all kinds.

“I think the cactus is a plant that, even when facing adversity, always requires a little bit of sunlight, and I love taking care of them,” she said. “When I sit down and water my plants, I find a way to reconnect with my identity, in my space, through the care I give them.”

Tina passed away in 2018 after a long battle with kidney disease and visual impairment. She was the glue of my mother’s family and the light at every gathering. She baked the cakes, called the guests for RSVPs and remained in control of her own life. At 70, she woke up one morning, took a bus to Costa Rica, and only called once she arrived. When she turned 80, she refused to leave the house without her low heels. On her 90th birthday, she wore dangling earrings and a gold necklace, because she never went anywhere without accessories. She passed at 92, and my mom still cares for the plants Tina gave her before she died.

“I feel that connection to something she was passionate about. It helps me believe there’s still a connection to something she loved doing,” she said. “Plants perceive the energy around them. They feel that if you’re taking care of them, if you talk to them, etc. I often move my plants around to have a different view, different company. I’m sure it makes them feel less alone.”

It was time for my mom to make dinner for her and my brother, so I let her go and called her before going to bed. Saying goodnight over the phone every day had become like learning how to enjoy vegetables as you get older — unremarkably familiar.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that perhaps there was a maternal super force guiding me in caring for Suki the succulent. As she grew another two centimetres despite my dwindling hopes, I realized I was participating in the same quiet language of nurture the women before me had taken part in. An inheritance of love, internal beauty and complex flaws that translated from one generation to another.

It's a Thursday in late November, and I notice my succulent has a stronger stem than when I first bought it. When I look at her, I now see a long road ahead of me, a resilience that rises in me, one that was never explicitly taught, but I somehow carry.

And when I water my plant, I will imagine Tina baking her cakes at dawn, my mom singing on our terrace, and me trying to nurture a life in my college apartment, honouring the red string that ties me with the women in my lineage who helped me grow to be who I am.

Suki has become more than a plant; she is now my companion. Maybe nature doesn’t just come from a store. Maybe nature, perhaps, means a little bit more.