A Tale of Two Aloe Vera Plants:II

We were just a diverse bunch of recent arrivals to Houston, talking about our daily activities and interests; when the aloe vera plant came up. 

You like growing plants? What is sábila? Ooooh, aloe vera. I really want one of those. Well, I have one. Kind of....

I was talking plants with a new student, but not a young one. She is a local mother, and recent transplant from Cuba. 

In order to make ends meet, I spent my summer teaching ESL at the Bilingual Education Institute to adult refugees and asylum-seekers in the U.S.A. During a class conversation activity, I asked students to choose a photo on their phone, and talk about it.

Seeing the pictures of her patio plant collection, I felt an instant bond. I too make a new place feel more mine by growing, caring for, and photographing a Little Eden. My obvious interest in the aloe vera prompted her to offer me a "baby" from it, should one spring up. I lit up at her friendly offer. It felt nice to be settling in to my new home, chatting flora with a fellow philo.

A few days later, she brought me this. 

Now, I know they say things run big in Texas, 

but this ain't no baby.

Weighing nearly 20 pounds, with teeth that really bite, it felt as likely to injure a person as heal them. I checked multiple times, did she really want me to have it? Such an immense treasure, all for me?

Although, I struggled to carry it, and did cut myself transplanting it, its formidable form is exactly what filled me with joy. When one of its sharp spikes carved a little red line on my finger, I was completely in love, thinking "You got me! Better be careful with you..."

The plant´s massive and unexpected abundance matched what I experienced as a teacher for BEI. With only 7 weeks to cultivate little classroom communities, I did not anticipate yielding such a bountiful harvest of friendship.

My students brought their absolute best to class each night, often after grueling workdays and/or family duties. Every weeknight, our classroom was home to chatter, laughter, jokes, sympathy, and gratitude. Students shared stories of horror from their homelands, and real triumphs here, in spite of arduous struggles.

After the last lessons and good-bye parties were done, we stayed in touch on WhatsApp. 

Messages, photos, and gifs flooded the de facto emotional support group chat. Students (and their teacher) recalled feeling a needed sense of home with each other, after so many changes to the lives we had known before. When I shared a photo of my new classroom, they cheered for my little step toward adaptation.

Changing countries, jobs, and homes multiple times over the last two years has left me longing to feel settled. I am happy, safe, and in love, but the roots need time to make their way through yet another new substrate.

Over the years, you can see my efforts to raise people, food, animals, money, ability, and mobilize into a career abroad. What may miss the eye is that it came with an ever-stronger sense of solitude. 

What I thought was the vision of "our" future, was mine alone, it turns out. A devotee of hyper-independence, it took a while for me to realize how much isolation it yields. One accomplishment after another still did not create a sense of connection.

Now, the learning curve for our new home has been Texas-style big and hefty. Driving the Houston highways is no joke, and the weather often feels like Mother Nature never really liked you and wants you to know it every minute of every day. 

But, a beautiful opportunity presents itself here. Like a river delta, all kinds of us have washed ashore, and make rich possibilities for a new life. In just eight months, hearts from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean, Europe, and Latin America have surrounded me wherever I live, work, or shop. Our common humanity becomes our only ground, so we all get to growing.

To make with the plant metaphors just one more time. I mean two more times:

With any new transplant, patience is key. Provide for its needs, care for it well, let it be,

and wait for the flourishing.

A Tale of Two Aloe Vera Plants: I

Homeschooling blogs and plant metaphors are companion perennials. All the aligned themes of growth and change and loss and flourish and resilience, I can't write much that isn't eventually overrun by their compatibility. It runs intertwined and wild, littering my words with heart-shaped leaves and white trumpet flowers, like bindweed in my former backyard in Oregon. 

Former. Like a lot of things. So many changes taking place render everything unrecognizable.

These days, I dedicate a little time to plants, and even less time to homeschooling, yet it is impossible to sit at this moment in my life and not need the plants to teach me something. Or just to tell me something.

A Tale of Two Aloe Vera Plants:

1. 

He stopped, due to an afterthought. One of my most challenging, so of course favorite, students threw his backpack to my feet. "Mislazlo I brought you this Happy Teachers Day even though you're a sub you're a good teacher!" he proclaimed, proudly producing a small plant in an adorable turquoise rainboot planter. 

I gasped, at first in appreciation, then concern. The plant, an aloe vera, was just what I had been wishing to add to my growing garden,* but it was severely battered by its ride in the neurodivergent nine year-old's backpack. I thanked and side-hugged the giver warmly,  placed the plant on my desk, and made a silent vow to try my best to bring it back to life, while being at peace with its eventual passing.

Dedicated but detached. 

*get it? growing? like I said before, bindweed.

Could I care for a plant known to cure and heal us? My life is currently a wild mix of learning curves, so I have had serious self-doubts. New neural pathways must develop in the aftermath of a big change. Transplanting to Texas is of course a major adjustment, albeit a lovely one. Here, and now, it is time to focus on what we know. 

Comfort comes from the familiar use of tendrils I had already outstretched into the soil and air. From our first December days here, I self-soothed by plunking green onion and romaine stumps into soil, just to make their green cells continue dividing. It reassured me that maybe sometimes I could still make good things happen on purpose.

That raggedy aloe vera had to make it!

I mean, whatever it's cool. Maybe it won't, and that's is okay too, but....

I might have derived a little too much restoration of faith in my life, just from seeing a few green spears poke up through the soil like that. The whole plant could be beautiful, as it mirrors the resilience and determination necessary for life's bumpy backpack ride. 

The End.

Lesson learned, right? Just hang in there, baby. Eventually you too can come back, looking grotesque but still here darnit. Dare to dream. 

You know I thought about blogging about it back when it happened. 

But, honestly I was kind of depressed by my interpretation of this particular metaphor. I just never really felt like writing about it.

Until....

to be continued

I Love Ethel

The following is a detailed report of an organism in a constant state of metamorphosis. Also there are beetles. 

Egg: 

I used to be a teacher in Colombia. It was a decades-long dream come true. It also became impossible to hold on to that dream, as a family, for very long. Conditions were no longer favorable. The most advantageous thing to do was let go and move on, to an unknown experience. It was time to completely reimagine life and family, without its previous pursuits of marriage and career. Grateful for mi Natalia, the two youngest kids and I moved to Texas. 

Larva:

Ms. Coworker entered my classroom, which is technically not my classroom. 

I'm a sub in my local ISD, occupying the room as a replacement for another teacher on maternity leave. For only a few months, I am to teach third grade math and science to about 30 students. It isn't forever, just until I can get to the next full time teaching job. By fall, hopefully.

Having very recently arrived to this school district and school, I completely rely on Ms. Coworker to tell me what to teach, when to teach it, and when to assess it. 

She hands me a stack of materials with an explanation, I try to make sure kids get it before they are tested on it. Simple. Straight-forward. Life is complicated enough right now, you know? 

However, on that day she tested the limits of my blind loyalty and obedience. 

She said,

We have to do beetles. Ew, I know! They're in the lab. 

Um...what? I was being paid 100 dollars a day, without healthcare. Having raised my kids in a backyard zoo once upon a time, I'm good on odd little critters. Thanks, but no thanks. 

And oh yeah, by the way. Nobody ever said anything about "doing" "beetles" when they interviewed me. 

We talked about gathering student data to form meaningful small groups and review foundational skills. We talked about genuine, restorative conversations, to deal with behavior challenges. 

We never discussed keeping creepy classroom pets. 

I feel like there should have been a stipend. 

Pupa:

Having prepared their habitats and plunked them in their cages, I started to look for information on mealworms and darkling beetles.

 Mealworms are to beetles what caterpillars are to butterflies. 

During science lessons, I taught the standard presentation on their basic care and information. Reading from a big-screen slideshow, my class and I discovered that they wouldn't need much, just for me to keep a couple of small pieces of fruit in the cage.  It's not their food either. They eat the branmeal included with bark mulch and potting soil they came in.  The little bits of orange, apple, and potato provide needed humidity and hydration. 

But, I read aloud to two groups of eight and nine year-olds, we needed to watch out for mold. 

THE NUMBER ONE KILLER OF YOUR DARKLING BEETLES COULD BE MOLD ON THE FRUIT, the PowerPoint presentation warned us. 

There was a quiet moment after I read this statement, during which the kids and I looked at each other with growing resolution. No matter how we felt about the bugs, we would not let that fruit get moldy. No matter what. 

Charged with the responsibility of keeping our bugs alive, it wasn't important if we liked them anymore. I was starting to love them. 

What a perfect reason to go to the local library, except I didn't yet have a library card. Okay, now two reasons to go to the library. By the end of my first week of beetle-keeping, I had a library card, a stack of books about beetles to share with my students, and a few Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings CDs to listen to in my new old car. She sang to me about lessons she learned the hard way, as I cruised through the humid Houston springtime, to and from my for-now classroom.

Maybe this wasn't going to be so hard after all. 

For the following weeks, my students and I were on it: changing out the fruit and keeping up with the daily beetle antics. Even kids who rarely pay attention to my instruction knew everything going on in the beetle cage. "Ms. Laszlo, you took the fruit out before it was moldy, but I think some of the branmeal got moldy from the fruit. We need to take it out too!" 

Big news rocked the group when several of the mealworms disappeared into quiet little cocoons. It's really really happening! The life cycle we studied is dutifully trodding its circular little path. What would happen next? 

Adult:

Yesterday morning I entered the classroom, turned on the lights, and went to check the beetles. One caught my eye right away.

Pale yellow and red, rather than black, this beetle was active and seemed as happy as any other. Still,  I was worried. Taking out my phone, I looked up WHY IS MY DARKLING BEETLE RED? and found out it´s fine. No fungus or disease was related to the beetle's color. It's a normal variation. Maybe it was a new adult? Brighter than the others, having just emerged without yet attaining its mature coloring? The students and I speculated and hypothesized, feeling like full-on research scientists by now. 

Later Ms. Coworker returned.

Good news! We don't need the beetles anymore. And they are invasive in this area, so releasing them isn't an option. We have to dispose of them. Put them in the freezer for 48 hours. They'll die, then you can throw them away.

Okay, but.

Okay.

"So, put them in the science lab freezer?" I asked, sort of mentally planning some kind of E.T. escape instead. 

No, we can't use that freezer. Can you do it at your house? I don't think my mom will let me put beetles in our freezer. She replied.

I brightened. "Oh sure! I mean, I am the mom at my house, so I say yes. Yes! to (not) putting beetles in my freezer. Bring me your beetle cage and I will take it home and (not) freeze it. You are welcome.*

*Begins to visualize a large backyard terrarium for two classroom sets of beetles at home. 

At home. Here.

Lucy is already getting darker. 

Did I mention I named some of them after the cast of I Love Lucy?  I never know which one is which, except Lucy. For now, I mean. She hasn't stayed the same since I first saw her, so she will likely keep changing. I expect her to grow into a darker color and be indistinguishable, blending in with all the others. Not looking so new anymore.

I will call her Ethel by mistake.