Published May 31, 2021

I took this photo in the lobby of my apartment building on November 5, 2019. Something about the plant and the note tugged at my heartstrings.

Please Don’t throw me away!
• been alive over 15 yrs
• need new soil
• just need a new home
with someone who
can take care of
me.

?thank you forever?

How could someone not be stopped in their tracks by that?

I was going to let this end right there, but a lot of lines came flooding back to me. Among them:

There is “Don’t Toss Us Away” by Lone Justice.

And, well, the plant was speaking to Seymour, but I was there, and I heard it, too.

I didn’t plan for something sorta silly like that to muscle its way into a poignant moment, but it did. A life contains multitudes. Even a plant’s life, I suspect.

One of the lines the photo brought back to me comes from a movie, described in a post from August 2020, the 10th anniversary of my drive from Louisiana to Oregon to start a new life.

There is a line from one of my favorite movies, “Seabiscuit,” when Seabiscuit’s eventual caretaker and trainer explains to his eventual owner why he’s nursing a rundown horse back to health.

“You don’t throw a whole life away just because he’s banged up a little.”

When the line is repeated later in the movie, you know that it’s not about a horse.

They weren’t speaking directly to me in this movie, either, but I was there, and I heard. Loudly. When I wrote that part of that August 2020 blog post, it was in reference to my beat-up, totaled 1999 Honda Civic. And that was months before it was stolen, stripped, then found, then put back together as much as possible. I could relate. I don’t have all of my parts that I had when I drove it across two time zones. We are both hanging in there as much as we can.

In the end, though, it could well be that the word that gets to me the most about that note is the first one.

Please.