THIS is my orchid.

 

Very late last night, just before I went to bed, wearing slippers, underwear and a sweatshirt, I YOUTUBED it and staked her.
To be clear, I was wearing the outfit, not my orchid…obviously.

Just after the staking, from said bed, I ordered proper plant clips, but till they arrive, I lent her mine.
Cute bangs, right?

Given to me by Dave Campbell and Tim Webb after I sang at their 25th anniversary, I’ve had this orchid for just over three years.
They gifted it to me the night I sang at their party, which was a week after what was supposed to be MY own 25th wedding anniversary.
While, in retrospect, I can’t believe I pulled it off, I’m glad I did it, and am STILL, three years later, equally glad I was asked.

Oh yes, they asked me way BEFORE my marriage imploded and after it did indeed spectacularly implode, I insisted that I would still do it, even though they gave me a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Dave and Tim have done so many wonderful things for me in this life, it was literally the least I could do for them, at the weirdest time in my life…well, so far as I know.

It COULD get weirder.
Life is funny that way.
One just hopes for the very best, girds their loins and hangs the fuck on.

Also, in retrospect, it occurs to me that sweet Dave and Tim were probably worried that I might lose my marbles and wreck their special night, and were too kind to say it…something that really didn’t occur to me at the time.
EEK, how that would that have been for them?
They never expressed a word of worry…yeesh…sorry, guys…I was too inside myself that September to be any kind of objective.
BUT PHEW!!! I’m super glad it turned out.

I just rooted around and found a picture of the night.

Lord and Taylor…life, right?

Oh, yeah…I LOVED THAT OUTFIT!!

It ended up being a really special, warm and wonderful, September night.
I laughed a lot. I’ve sung better…but I think I did the job.
The party was filled with many people I love, others I really liked and a few people who were in both those categories, but were, at the time, working with my ex husband, so they were strange around me.
Which was not their fault, really.
What can one fucking say to their friend who was cheated upon by their cast mate?

Not bloody much. 🤷🏻‍♀️

A NUMBER of times that night, before AND after I sang, I sat in the bathroom of that lovely restaurant, gathering my mental shit together…and still, as I said, I laughed a lot that night.
See?
Weird. TWO THINGS, TRUE AT ONCE.

And later that night?
After it was all over, INCLUDING the singing, and I was saying “I love you” and “goodbye” to Dave and Tim, they handed me this orchid.
Gingerly, I took it, and was promptly terrified.
I walked away from the party, holding it like someone clutching a baby that they had no idea what to do with…far away from their body and like it was going to explode.

And later still, I made the trip back to my apartment with my new orchid sitting in my lap, both of us safely in the passenger seat of a restored, red, convertible VW Cabriolet, driven by the dude I was dating at the time.
I asked the dude to pick me up, after the party, two blocks from the venue, because I didn’t want anyone to know I was dating.
My feelings about dating were far too fragile and unformed to even mention.

Well.
Okay.

Except to my friends Duff and Barry, who I’d sat with at the end of the night, in the comfy-couched quiet corner of the anniversary party, talking shit with while happily drinking Pinots.
After a companionable pause in the conversation, I said something like

Me: So, dating apps, right? Fucked. Anyhow, I’m sort of not really dating this dude, you guys…and he’s picking me up in about ten minutes and this is fucked right? It’s fucked. Fucked.

They: What. WHAT!?!? WHAT!! EVERYTHING…TELL US EVERYTHING.

What the fuck was I thinking?

WHY did I say anything.

It was about this time I texted the dating dude and instructed him to pick me up around the corner…far, far, FAR from their loving, but interested eyes.

I knew not one thing about orchids, besides the fact that they look VERY delicate and highly killable.
I knew not much about dating, except that it was equally as terrifying to me as this orchid, and possibly as life threatening as its care.

But that night, driving away from the party with a handsome and funny man I liked being around, away from a party I’d just made it through, even enjoyed, I felt awesome, capable, sexy, mysterious (who brings an orchid on a date? Me. The answer is me), and a bit new.

A month or so later, after the cabriolet guy and I parted ways, the orchid and I lived on, even though I still felt highly under qualified to be minding her AND minding myself, as I stumbled through a gross separation.
Is there really any other kind of separation, though?

She really kept going and going in bloom,  I was stunned at her tenacity, and about two months later, TWO MONTHS, she lost her petals…and then I watered her once a week, and waited for her to die.
But she didn’t.

About seven month later, she was doing something.
She looked like she was going to effing bloom again.
Well, goddamn.

Around THIS time, I was dating…and I use that word fairly loosely…a different guy.
A new guy.
When he came by, he used to talk to my orchid and wipe her leaves with a warm cloth, something he repeated every month or so.
Yes, he stayed in my life for a while.

He was equally as good at minding my parts.

While he minded both of our parts, she bloomed so spectacularly, I was fairly flabbergasted.
Seven blooms.
Seven.
Which he, incidentally, jokingly, and not jokingly took credit for.
He took credit for both of our blooms.

Something of which he was not totally wrong about, but nor was he totally right.

Certainly, I was more inside my body than I’d been in my entire life…but part of that…a GOODLY part of that was my own doing.

BUT he was indeed good with his hands.
No joke.
All truth.
Bippety-boppety-boo.

So, I “dated” him, watching my orchid do her beautiful thing, the same time I worked my way through a divorce that was just about as gross as my separation.

After the divorce was over, and the Orchid Lover and I ended our whatever-thing, she kept kept her blooms.
For three months.
AS god is my witness.

It’s like she was silently singing to me that it was indeed ME, it was she and I, all along.

In passing, I sent a picture of her to Dave and Tim,  and they exclaimed that of ALL the orchids they gave out that night? Mine was the only one still alive.
What?
WHAT!?!?

THIS IS ON, BABY.

I started to not just water her once a week, but wipe her leaves with a warm cloth when they became dusty, and I talked to her, reminding her that no matter how much she liked that guy, we would be just fine, better than fine, on our own.

I could mind both of our parts myself.

Then?

After the blooms finally fell, the stalk went dry.

What the fuck is this, now.

Well, Sharron, it’s a fucking pandemic.
The pandemic put the world in lock down, and my fucking orchid is going to her greater reward.
This is fucking bullshit.
And I’m alone as fuck.
The world is ending.
Here we are.
Fuck this shit.

BUT NO.

After my initial pandemic-infused over reaction, the Google tells me to cut off the stalk…she is going into hybernation.

HYBERNATION.

Huh.

This will surely be the killing, right?
This sounds like a very delicate and specific transition.
Sweet jesus, this cannot be good.
MAYBE SHE’LL MAKE IT.
Maybe you’ll make it.

So, we carried on, she and I.
I still watered her once a week, washed her leaves, looked out the window at the empty Toronto streets, watching the empty streetcars roll by one after the other, telling her and myself that I didn’t know what they fuck was going to happen…but I would keep doing the same things I’d already done.
Just keep on keeping on.

And for a while she did nothing really, but she encouragingly grew some new leaves, and some others died, and I pruned them.
Then, after about six months…she started to grow spires…small ones.
I looked it up on the Google, she indeed had spires.
Then, slowly, she grew more.
And then, I sold my house, and we moved to our new condo.

Looking at my new window set up, I was worried she wouldn’t like the new place, and the light it gets, so I bought her a special stand to get her closer to the light.
I was worried.
I’d also decided it was okay if she decided it was time to go to the Rainbow Road with my dogs, because now she was my only pet type companion…and that was what she deserved, the Rainbow Road.

But now.
More spires.
More wipes, more water.
One month away during which my pal Mike minded her.
He sent me a picture of her, that arrived while I was on the side of the road, just past Saskatoon asking if THIS was the orchid.
I had a few plants. : )

And after my debacle with my car, with the spires now as long as can be, I thought it was maybe time to give her the leg up she needed to make it to the next stage of her life.
WE needed a pick me up.

So, back to last night, in my underwear and sweatshirt, with the help of the Youtube…I delicately took three of her spires (to be honest there were four candidates, but I snapped one, even though I was doing it very carefully) and staked them.

Who knows what will happen, but I hope this works out.

THIS IS THE MYSTERY.

SHE, like me, HAS SEEN SOME SHIT, YOU GUYS…I hope she sees some more.
I’m VERY willing to keep trying. She keeps surprising me.

What a relationship. She’s a good bet, right?

Cross your fingers.

November 24th, 2021 – S.M.
Toronto, ON

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