Spider plants and Miracles

Tonight I went out for girl's night with my best friend from high school. This is a friend whom I can only describe as Howard Roark from The Fountainhead if you've read it. She has always been self-sufficient. She has always been the person, when I don’t know who I am or what I’m about, that I feel uncomfortable around. Because, in her sincerity, there was always the implication that I was, in my falsity, insincere, I was perpetually left with a feeling of hollow aching. It was never a judgment. It was never anything other than me knowing, by comparison, what a long way I had still to go. What a pleasure it was to be with her as just me, knowing who I am and not being insincere or insecure.

And so, I am finally an adult. I’m getting used to saying that. I’m a grown up.

I’m sure this is getting old: my self-affirmations. “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and dog-gone-it, people like me!” But having spent so many years uncomfortable in my own skin, this is always a miracle of evolution and accomplishment.

One of the best books I’ve ever read and reread and reread is The Alphabet of Grace by Frederick Buechner. In it, there is this amazing passage where he speaks of the miracle of sleep followed by awakening. In sleep, he notices, we are divorced from our self, and there is the miracle of traveling through unknown universes and psyches throughout the night, only to return to exactly who we are the next morning; waking up as just the same person and knowing ourselves as we do each dawn. This is a point that feels even more miraculous to me now, having woken up for years and knowing immediately that I was lost and alone. Now, in my present state and understanding, to awaken to a confident and known quantity, it is a blessing and a miracle beyond words.

I remember so clearly, waking up one morning in our apartment in San Francisco, looking over the alabaster shoulder of my sweet now-husband when we were just beginning, to the sunlight reflecting on the hardwood floors. The spider plant had been growing—parachuting new growth on and on towards the floor.

Here’s what I wrote that morning; is this a cop out, pasting a remembered memory? Space and Memory—this is quintessential, so I’ll allow it…


Happiness—waking up in warm, strong arms that surround me for the right reasons—why is this problematic? But the light falls fuzzy on the comforter and makes me anxious as I watch the spider plant descend slowly over a month of warm, perfect sunny mornings. As I watch the lightening sky through the bay window over the arm of chipped mahogany on the threadbare, green, Queen Anne sofa.

But don’t settle me. Don’t make me safe. Don’t make me happy. Make me reach—leave me alone. I want to watch and wonder at your spider plant and the big-leafed tropical one with elephant ear leaves and odd planes of tilt and green and angle. I want to exist mentally in the open space where sunlight is lazy on your wood floor from seven to seven in the spring. This apartment is settled and secure and knows its purpose. It is used to being what it is—but I’m still watching. Learning from these quiet spaces and slow, patient plants and threadbare sofa, to be what I am and to live for the half day of sun crawling warm and pleasant over the open space of me and my planes of being.

And I’m learning too—did I mention that? Learning to be quiet and patient and without myself. I’m stepping out of myself—and I like it. I like it a lot. This quiet sun on my boards—on my threadbare seat and chipped wooden arms, as I slowly descend—grow—reinvent and become sure and know my purpose.


Yesterday a good friend asked me if I figured out how to be enough for myself before I met Gordon or if I learned it through him, through his encouragement and love. I think this snippet of my writing answers that question. It was both. It was being loved totally even when I wasn’t sure who I was. It was Gordon saying “do it girl! Be electric color Lindsay!” It was the safety of knowing I was loved no matter who I encountered in the mirror when I woke in the morning.

Once, Gordon said to me, “You’re like this enormous planet with so much pull, so much mass—you’ve got great gravity, girl.” It was words like this that pushed me. Being with someone who, no matter how loved I felt and how comfortable the relationship was, always drove me on to be more. I was challenged and accepted simultaneously. Magic. I became the spider plant, flourishing and parachuting each moment towards the warm floorboards of quiet and calm. And that is where I find myself now. And that is why the quiet and the contentment are ok. Because they were hard-won. Because I earned the security of where I am now. What I didn’t yet know when I wrote these words is that I could be settled; I could be safe; I could be happy—and still be reaching.

This is me reaching—can you feel it? I can.