The bonsai
Her husband sat expectantly on the lounge chair in the back yard, leaning forward, just waiting for Filly to comment. On the table in front of him was a pot with a small “tree”.
“Look” he said, “I got a bonsai”. Filly sat down beside him, ready to hear the story. Her husband had left a few hours earlier to go drive his car. Other men went hunting, or played golf at country clubs, but her husband just liked to drive his car. He would go for several hours, driving in the sunshine with the wind blowing. Up until now he had never returned with anything.
But this time he had pulled over on the side of the road because some little Japanese lady who spoke very little English, was selling these little bonsai trees. Filly’s son had loved these trees as well when he was a kid, and they had grown one for a while. They are difficult to grow and basically are kept stunted in their growth with restricted water and trimming of new growth.
According to the lady, that particular tree was twenty something years old. She prayed over it, put a little panda in the dirt, and then took the money and handed it over to Filly’s husband. Filly did not ask how much it cost. She seriously did not want to know.
Then came the litany of things from her husband, that had to be done to keep the plant alive. Filly listened wearily. Already her husband had taken ownership of an orchid that only rarely bloomed and when it was watered, left black dirt in the sink. It also needed special care. Five kids later, Filly was not thrilled to have more things that required special attention. She focused on the plants that could be thrown in the dirt and thrived…like Spider plants or coleus. They were showy, beautiful colors and grew fast and furiously. Completely the opposite of this bonsai.
Filly did not think much more about the bonsai tree until she saw her husband taking out one of her nice casserole dishes to use as a watering trough for the tree “because the tree cannot be watered from the top”. Irritating…Not a good solution to use her dishes for dirt. Filly looked the other way and mentally made a note to find a better dish to give her husband that she did not care about.
A few days later when she came into the house, Filly noticed that most of the dirt surrounding the bonsai tree in the back yard, had been dug out and was spread out on the table. They had squirrels…many devious squirrels…who loved to climb over onto the patio and rip the cushions on the chairs in order to pull out the stuffing for their nests. Filly’s husband had not understood her frustration with the squirrels until now…”Those bastards” he said…rushing out to rescue the bonsai. He took the pot with the bonsai tree, and put it in the rocks out under the shrubs where the squirrels never went…
Until the next day when it was supposed to rain. “It needs a lot of sun but it is not supposed to get direct rain” he said as he scurried out to bring the tree back in to the safety of the kitchen table, where it rested for the next few days…. Oh brother Filly thought… The bonsai AGAIN.
The tree stayed on the table until he realized that, though it was safe from the squirrels, it would not get enough sun. Filly could hear her husband moving the tree again and started to feel annoyed again. She had been laid up for the past few days…with the flu and the bonsai tree required too much mental effort for her in that moment.
But just then, her husband appeared and had come to her bed on the couch with a steaming cup of instant coffee, which Filly accepted gratefully and propped on the edge of her computer. He had been doing something for her…not the bonsai. Yay!
“Not a good idea” her husband said. If you spill it, your computer will be ruined. Filly had no other place to put her cup of coffee because the table beside the sofa had plants and a gigantic cowboys and Indians chess set that she liked to leave there because she liked to play chess with Tater. Filly had lost count as to how many times her husband or the kids had tried to move those chess pieces out of the way, and had knocked them down causing them to break. Probably at least half of them had heads that had been broken and re-glued.
She started to feel sorry for herself, all cooped up on the sofa for three days, not able to do anything besides sleep. That was when he husband came around and started jokingly moving the chess pieces out of the way for her. He took an exaggerated amount of time to move one chess piece at a time, excruciatingly slow, and then congratulating himself when that piece had not fallen and the head had not broken off…making her laugh.
As she watched him act like a clown Filly realized and acknowledged to herself, that her husband liked the details, and she liked the big picture. He could get really immersed in the growing of a bonsai and in contrast, she could get excited about creating a garden of coleus for Tater and Mister to sell. He liked to plan and she liked spur of the moment. They were opposites and yet a perfect complement to each other. She could be impatient and too quick to make decisions, sometimes that she regretted, and he could be slow and ponderous, like a sloth, paying too much attention to the smallest details, sometimes incapable of making a definitive decision, overthinking everything.
She had not gotten up off the sofa for three days…except to go to the bathroom and to drink her turmeric shots every few hours. But now she wanted to get up…Where did he put that bonsai this time she wondered? And she smiled.