AVOCADO BLUES

Growing up in Massachusetts, I was drawn to stories of struggling artists in big cities--how they began to understand themselves; how they escaped their hometowns; how they found which Big City to escape to; and finally, all the details of their daily existence. It mattered less to me what their final contributions to the world ended up being. More important: how, who, where and why.

Something every artist seemed to possess, whether in a fifth floor walk-up in NYC or a Paris attic, was an avocado plant. Like some sort of exclamation point, standing on its head: a woody, single stalk, reaching forever skyward. The first green leaves "the point"; maybe "the point of no return"; or, "the point of it all"...hmmm. Whatever the symbolic meaning, avocado plants, grown from single seeds, sprouting a long, white root in a glass of water while balancing on three toothpicks, well, this was real-world magic. The perfect house pet for starving artists around the world. If you really were an artist, you could grow one. You had to grow one. It was like, well, Cosmic Law.

When I got to school in New York, it was upstate; far from NYC walk ups. Still, at college, I was led to believe that I would BE the artist who would make it. Excellent mentors; access to the best studios; adults who maybe smiled at my drive, but who,nevertheless, propelled me forward, honestly hoping I was right. It was a kind of gift. For a while...

They never fed us avocados in upstate New York, at Wells College, in the seventies. The first time I ever had guacamole, though, was in my paramour's cottage, just after our first break-up/make-up, during a late snowstorm. I attempted to salvage that wondrous pit...much as I tried to salvage the relationship (the first adult connection I was to experience, and the one that has scarred me, since). I learned about the- three- toothpick- balancing -act- above- the- shot- glass- full- of -water. The proper depth to hang the semi-dry "seed" and how one should change the water every few days, until the white, thready taproot appeared.

(People were less sure about the next step, though. And without proper instruction, I always ended up with a rapidly decomposing taproot and a bald head slightly poking it's top above the dirt.)

 Much like the relationship that cold spring, my avocados always began with miraculous strength. Then, they dried up, and left only headstones of defeat, in the dirt.

When I fled to Los Angeles and lived in several artist communes during the hey-days of Performance Art, growing avocados in coffee cans was either a.) quaint and literary or b.) quaint and romantic. Not quite "edgy enough" and way too domestic for the radicals I hung out with...I soon gave up the practice. However, in my heart, I always knew: if I could grow a successful avocado plant from a pit, I truly would become the artist I always dreamt of.

Several relationships, cottages, lofts, farms, condos and beachhouses later, the nurturing of the plant evaded me. At one point, as the Head Teacher at the UCI Farm School, an entire class of sixth- graders sprouted avocados for me for Christmas. Dutifully, they wrapped their successful projects in colorful paper and metallic ribbons, presenting them to me at the annual Parent and Kid Solstice Party. I was touched...but my touch was death to all the avocado plants. Some suggested that it was the incense (Nag Champa) that I insisted on burning during meditation. Others suggested maybe I just wasn't watering them enough. Or, too much. Or not giving them the proper sun. Or shadow. Or warmth. Or coolness. One very wise third- grader from Sri Lanka told me: "Maybe you just aren't good with things in pots."

Maybe.

And it was true: indoor plants never bloomed for me. Even caged animals I tried to keep, died horrible deaths far too soon. (Not from neglect, but from accidental causes--mostly stemming from paranoia about accidental causes...sigh.) My best friend presented me with a wax cactus plant--a candle that was so cunningly made, people often watered it when staying over--believing surely I would kill a cactus, too. I'm good with candles. It outlasted even the Farm School, and moved away with me, back to Los Angeles, where I started up with the avocados again. (My first solo loft on Detroit Street, mid-town, the Miracle Mile: what better place to grow an artist's trademark?)

Alas, it wasn't to be. I sure ate enough guac and sliced avocado on my salads, but sprouting a plant: nada.

So, with a kind of fatalism (and irony that I don't usually possess,) I ate the avocado my Mother brought home from Hannaford's (three weeks after she bought it.)

"Most of them were so mushy--but this one's really hard and fresh! Here!" she handed it to me triumphantly. When I left it out on the kitchen table to ripen, no one in the family believed I would ever really eat it.

Finally, it did ripen and was soft enough to make guacamole. It was not L.A. street vendor style, but, it did remind me of my previous 35 years on the other coast...sigh. I couldn't bring myself to toss out the pit. I  washed and dried it like an infant. I put it on the windowsill for a few days. Then, begging three toothpicks and my Father's best whiskey- sipping- shot- glass, I propped the pit and waited.

"What the Hell is that?!" Dad asked the first morning he saw it over his breakfast. "Don't tell me it's some kind of alien experiment!" (He was serious. In his eyes, like the rest of the family, I'm still "that weird junior high schooler doing alien investigations at the kitchen table"...)

I assured him it was a terrestrial agricultural attempt.

"What are you doing with that thing?" My niece inquired while sipping a Capri Sun after geometry class.

Again, I explained the venture.

"But why, Auntie K.K. ?" she scowled at the pit.

"All artists keep avocado plants. It's just...something we do," I sighed, trying to convince myself that I was still historically significant.

"It's gross." Ann blew in, dropping her keys and fifty pound purse on the table, almost spilling the glass.

When we went to the Highland Games for six days, I forgot about the pit. It was on the way home that I realized this. Yet again, I had "killed" something I loved. How many of the avocado race would fall prey to my mindlessness?

"Well, we didn't know what we were supposed to do--so, we kept changing its water--every day," Mom and Dad informed, me when I walked back into 88 Maple.

"Unbelievable," Ann rolled her eyes. 

"Look!" I pointed to the bottom of the pit. Whatever watering they had done had made the critical difference. On the bottom,a tiny crack had appeared. And from it's creamy depths, something that resembled a maggot was hanging.

"Gross," Ann, the nurse, said.

I thought it was beautiful.

For three weeks, the taproot made its way downward. When it hit the bottom of the shot glass, even my Mother agreed, I needed to plant it in real dirt. Dutifully, she took me to the cellar. There, amid Christmas boxes, old sleds, Dad's abandoned "worm box", were about fifty  planters of all sorts and sizes. 

 "Help yourself," Mom took one step out of the room, then, coming back, insisted I use a large tin vase with  flowers painted on it. (Beggars don't bite the hand that hands them the pot.) I took it into the backyard and rooted up some soil from a terra cotta planter that once held geraniums.

Inside, I placed it on the windowseat in the diningroom, where the sun hung around all day.

"You know, all the nematodes and insects that are hibernating this time of year are in that soil are going to wake up. You are now giving them a warm, inviting habitat..." Ann indicated the Ant Farm, that I had created.

In horror, I removed the painted pot (and avocado) to the front porch railing. Safely back outside.

For two weeks, I watered it, talked to it, and waited for it's little brown skull to produce at least one spike. Nothing. I could only pray for the taproot under the soil. (But, it was getting sun. It was airing out.) Nothing alive had crawled from the dirt. It had other plants to commune with. All seemed balanced in its natural new world.

Until the next "accident". Early frost. Bane of New England. A white coating over everything, one morning in October. In horror, I ran out to the porch. Yes. The lovely tin painted pot with its tiny avocado head just peeking from the new dirt was covered in ice crystals. (I felt like a funeral sounds.)

Once again, I had accidentally destroyed what I had been so carefully nurturing. What the Hell was wrong with me?

"What the Hell is wrong with you?" Ann saw me bring the pot inside.

"There are no more bugs in here," I told her, plunking the pot on the windowseat, in the pale sun.

"No avocados, either," she said.

I couldn't give up.

I reflected on the rough road wild avocados have...how they fall from trees, sometimes hundreds of feet high; the fruit is ravaged by raccoons and possums and people; the pits then scarred and ripped, tossed asunder. And yet...a few manage to go on to the next incarnation in their fruity lives. I knew because I had shared a wonderful artist's cottage with a leather craftsperson, who worked for the studios, outside of  Burbank. Close to the L.A. river (which would horrify any New Englander), an avocado tree that was seventy -five years old, guarded our back yard. (I knew the raccoons and possums and skunks and humans who would steal the green treasures. I knew the life-cycle of those pits that survived.) So, maybe, my pit, too, would pull through.

I could only hope. Pray. Duck the jarring comments of my family; about how California has fried my brain, for sure.( And wait.)

Yesterday, coming into the diningroom to water the pit, I noticed : a weird shadow against the sunny window.

Upon close inspection, I discovered: FAITH is something short, brown, with a fuzzy topknot of bright green!

Somehow, my avocado has sprouted! An inch of growth overnight! I shouted to everyone who was home, including Maeve-the-Wonder-dog! (Only Maeve seemed to share my enthusiasm--much like she shared my guacomole...) None of them had attempted to sprout this particular fruit for four decades, without a single success. None of them had attempted to own the "self" they dreamed about since childhood. They had all become successful in their professional lives. They had all created solid realities in New England. Only I had run off; run away; always chasing "something" I could never quite catch. The avocado was the symbol of exactly that.(Cue cheesy music...) Maybe.

Today, it is still green and reaching upward, sitting safely on the windowseat, in the sun.

(I did, however, see a fruit fly take off from the pot...)

Only time is gonna tell.