Repotting
Tonight, in a moment of loneliness, I decided to repot a plant.
My smallest and most forgotten.
She had outgrown her pot.
To re-pot a plant, you have to remove it from the soil it has grown from
and gently, slowly
– though your fingers sometimes cramp and your arms grow a bit tired –
untie the mess of its comfortable roots.
Each fragile leg
– which has reached out from the heart of the plant since it was a small sprout and wrapped around whatever it could find…dirt or pot or self…to survive –
must be massaged and relaxed until it releases its grip
on all that it has had to be in order to become.
The roots must loosen before the plant enters new soil,
so that the nutrients of the new environment can be absorbed.
This is required for the plant to grow, but – moreover – it is required for the plant to live.
As the one who plants, it feels almost painful to pull apart this carefully crafted cocoon of roots
– all this little, living thing has ever known or needed.
Some small tendrils snap and it’s hard to tell end from end.
As the minister of this process, I feel compassion and empathy
…perhaps anxiety…
and yet knowing:
this must be.
This is best.
As I prod and pull, large pieces of dirt and wood chips fall from the root nest and,
though deeply embedded pieces
(the very structure these roots have wrapped around for survival and security),
they no longer belong.
They fall away –
along with all the protection they once brought.
And slowly,
painfully,
beautifully,
the wiry lines of life come free.
They lie limp in the hand of the One who Plants–
free, clean, perhaps afraid,
but no longer constrained by the smallness once required to survive,
now stifling to growth.
Does the plant feel the grief of its lost comfort?
Of its stretched and tired roots now ready to expand?
Of the loss of what used to be necessary?
Or does it know?
That it made it this far?
That its time for growth has come?
That the Planter knows the purpose of the stretching and the pain?
Do I know?
