by Hemingway
Stages Of Life
INFANCY
More than a year ago, maybe almost two now, I did the childish rite of passage where you poke four toothpicks into an avocado pit and in order to sprout it, suspend that pit half into a glass of water.
That initial part of the process of sprouting an avocado plant was interminable. It must have taken 5 or 6 weeks to sprout. It didn't help that I was doing it in the dead of winter and even in the south of France, January isn't exactly warm. But every several days I'd ineffectually change the water and wonder if I hadn't managed to accidentally spear a rock or an avocado-shaped wine cork instead of a pit.
Finally, a little thing appeared at the bottom of the pit. Once started though, it grew quickly. Soon the glass was full of white roots, and a 3-centimeter stem extended from the top. Brown with a green tip - the unmistakable sign of new life.
CHILDHOOD
While potting the plant into soil for the first time, I decided that my new avocado plant needed a name. I knew already at this early stage that she was female, what with her neediness and constant demand for attention. I decided on Doris, which is generally agreed to be a classic name, and also the height of femininity.
No child should grow up alone, so I went to IKEA and bought cactus Boris for 5 euros. He was initially taller than Doris, but soon Doris would dwarf easy-going, and slow growing Boris. Regardless of their size differential they quickly became inseparable.
THE TEEN YEARS
Once in soil, Doris grew quickly. I know that's a relative term but let's just say that by comparison to the sprouting process, which again took for-fucking-ever, her growth at this stage was impressive. In no time, she was 8 centimeters tall. The problem was that she had only two large leaves right at the top, growing larger by the minute, and that was it. She was a long brown stalk topped by two leaves.
A little internet research revealed that avocados are actually trees, not plants. Now, I wanted an avocado plant, not because I don't like trees or I don't have the room for one, but because trees tend to live a long time and that's just too much responsibility for me. I mean, killing a plant with neglect is one thing, but killing a tree is a crime, or it should be. So a little more internet research revealed how to circumcise Doris so that she would remain plant-like forever.
All I did was I pinched off the little bit of new growth at the top of the tree. For something so easy, I still felt guilty as I did it. Who was I to play dog with Doris' reproductive system? I'm not an American politician. After I did that though, Doris spouted little nubs all over her trunk and soon enough she had leaves everywhere.
Doris was coltish just like an ungainly, long-limbed 17-year-old human girl, and also very beautiful. She was the very picture of health and vigor. Now twice as tall as Boris, he didn't appear to mind. Even in the plant kingdom, boys are so much easier to raise than girls.
ADULTHOOD
Growth somewhat slowed during this period but there was still growth. It was around the end of her teen period that I noticed one leaf going brown, not along the edges but in the center.
Three months after that, all of her leaf tips turned brown. I lost sleep over this and I'm ashamed to say I even turned to drink for a while (and that was the only reason). My beautiful girl was in trouble and I couldn't figure out the problem. The Internet became a cesspool of misinformation. ChatGPT suggested I throw her out and buy another avocado, but I was just too invested in Doris. I'd bought her a stupidly expensive bright red enameled pot at the Truffaut store close to the Satoritz bio shop where I'd picked her up as an infant. I'd decorated the soil around her trunk with stones and shells I'd picked up from various beaches around the world. A couple of years earlier I'd gotten the feve in the new years galette - it was a little ceramic babushka, and I'd stuck that in among her shells and stones. Doris had attained supermodel status in the avocado plant world.
Sure, she still had that brown spot but it seemed to be under control - it was like Cindy Crawford's mole.
MIDDLE AGE
Then one day, one of her biggest leaves became positively speckled with brown ... 'shot-through' is the word that best comes to mind. I used to be married to an obese, semi-retarded demon from hell, and her rather nice cousin got a brain tumor. The surgeons, in explaining why they couldn't operate, said that the reason was that his tumor was more like a paint splatter than a cohesive blob, and they just couldn't go in and clean it up because of that. That splatter is probably why he managed to live for another 12 years. If those ghouls had cut him open, he'd have been dead within a year.
Now Doris had the splatter.
I decided to do nothing. And certainly to not cut the bad parts out as suggested by my serial-killer human girlfriend, Sophie. Instead I would do what I could to see to it that she had nothing but the good life. I added a little coffee to the soil because I'd heard that avocados like that. I wiped her leaves down gently during pollen season to get that yellow crap off. I'd bring her inside from the terrace if it got too cold or too windy, I think she was strong enough to tolerate the wind and it might have even been good for her, but I did it anyway. Throughout all of this I barely paid any attention to Boris except to water him lightly on occasion - sometimes I'd bring him in as well just to keep Doris company, because by this point I was worried that if I put too much space between them, Doris would die.
A short aside about Boris. The second time I ever got the feve in the new year's galette was in 2023. It was a little ceramic Superman. This was perfect for Boris because seriously, Superman is the only creature on the planet who can get close to Boris without paying a terrible price. I have Supe now nestled down deep right in the middle of the 'Boris cluster', peeking out at the world. Boris has become his little fortress of solitude. Funny how the world always has a way of giving you the feve you need when you need it.
And by 'paying a terrible price' I mean this: you cannot touch Boris. You may be thinking, 'Sure, obviously you can't pet a cactus, but surely you can give him a little tentative touch, very lightly with the tip of your calloused index finger and not get pricked?'
No, not with Boris. I don't know if he's unique but he's covered in a thousand of these very, very fine needles that you can barely see and they will detach like porcupine quills and go deep into your skin if you so much as look at him for too long. I learned this the hard way soon after birthing him from IKEA and again not too recently when I wasn't paying attention and I accidentally brushed my right hand along Boris' handsome flank. Immediately, I felt the sting of 32 needles going deep into my hand. How do I know 32? Because once hit, I didn't touch the site at all, I just ran inside and got my strongest reading glasses and my tweezers and I picked 32 superfine needles from my hand. Luckily by pulling each needle straight out, I was only itchy and irritated for an hour or so, instead of the days it would have been if I had simply wiped the site, breaking off each needle where it entered my hand.
But this story is about Doris ...
I have it in my calendar to water my plants every Sunday. I don't really give a shit about my plants other than Boris and Doris, and as we know Boris doesn't care whether or not I water him as far as I can tell, so really the calendar reminder is for Doris alone, but really Doris' need/desire for water can't be boiled down to every seven days. Luckily Doris tells me when she needs water. This is how it usually works ...
The Sunday timer goes off and I often will water the plants, but every once in a while it goes off and I look at Doris and she looks fine. So I figure, 'I'll leave the watering until Monday,' and I forget about it.
Then on Monday or Tuesday I'll look over at Doris and all her leaves will be hanging straight down, like a bunch of celery that's been stored out of water. So I'll rush to water her (only with room temperature water that's been sitting out for days) and within two hours her leaves will be straight out horizontal again, the bigger, heavier ones seeming to defy gravity by doing that.
So then it's easy to tell when she needs water. The question that's been niggling at me is whether this drought flood cycle is actually bad for her, or if she'd grow better if I watered her lightly before her leaves started drooping ...
Doris will never fruit. I don't really understand how this works but I think it's like ferns - where there's a male and a female (and we've already worked out what Doris is) so Doris alone without another plant of the opposite sex nearby will never fruit. Enter Chuck Norris.
THE NEXT GENERATION
I spied him in the grocery store. He was a runt avocado. From Zimbabwe I think and not exactly a good value at 2 euros because I guess it was off-season. But I bought him anyway and brought him home and cut off the delicious flesh that surrounded him and I ate that with some sardines, petit pains, and Harissa sauce. Of course, I did all this out of sight of Doris. And this time it was April and I put him on my highest shelf in the kitchen right over the kitchen sink so that literally every time I did the dishes, I could check his water level and change it if it got shitty. Within 3 weeks Chuck Norris sprouted and something like a week ago I potted him into soil with his little antenna wiggling in the air, usually struggling to point towards the sun, just as Doris used to do when she was little.
I'm not going to circumcise Chuck Norris. I'm going to let him grow the way he wants to grow. I'll just give him lots of room and food and love and see where that takes us. I'll bet it's going to be far, because really, every child after the first one is a piece of cake by comparison.
JUST THIS MORNING
I was not having a cigarette out on the terrace. I swear. Because as far as Sophie is concerned, I quit seven years ago. And a beautiful morning it was too. At about 8 a.m., it was already 12 degrees and brightly sunny, which made the terrace already 18 degrees or so. It had rained hard yesterday so not only was the air fresh, but everything was greener than green. Boris and Doris and Chuck Norris seemed happy.
I notice that, like all women who have reached their fifties, Doris is now getting ugly. She's got mismatched leaf sizes and lots of brown fungus or whatever it is. I transplanted her recently and noticed that her root system was surprisingly haphazard and shallow. (She really didn't like the transplanting by the way, even though it was into a new and expensive white ceramic pot. She sulked by drooping dangerously low for the next day and a half.)
Anyway, I was idly looking at Boris and cute little baby Chuck Norris and ugly Doris and it suddenly struck me.
OLD AGE
Doris is old now. She is about my age in avocado years. That's not all what struck me though. What also struck me is this - Doris's 'body' is analogous to my body. There are parts that are completely dead, other parts that are shot through with death yet still surrounded by green life. And still other parts that are browning around the edges. Despite this, her/our core is strong, and she at least is experiencing impressive new growth out of her top now that I've stopped pinching off that possibility. She's dare I say, doing well. Becoming a 'grande old dame'.
And of course, no matter how robust she is genetically, her health is dependent on environmental factors, such as proper sunlight and water as appropriate times, not having her system be overwhelmed by a fungii or virii, and of course, companionship and sex, which I hope will be handled nicely with the May-December romance I'm setting up between Chuck Norris and Doris.
I mean, her dead leaf will never undead itself. But the stem going from the trunk to the dead leaf is still green, so why cut it off? Similarly, she has one leaf which is 50% dead and 50% alive. That dead-eyed killer Sophie would murder that leaf if she could, under the guise of 'pruning' but that leaf is an impossibly interconnected network of veins with I imagine chlorophyll and avocado oil running through it (for lubrication and sexual attraction). I don't want to fuck with it. I've long said that I prefer women with a line or two. Scars are even better. They're badges of honor for a life lived to this point. If I see an admittedly smoking hot 19-year-old without a line on her face, just symmetrical perfection, it looks kind of alien to me. I've gotten to a place where laugh lines give me a woody. Sophie, who is practically a lifetime away from 19-years-old, has got scars and bumps all over her. I love them all.
So it is the same with Doris. If she were a perfect uniform green with 16 leaves of all roughly the same size - sure it would look nice, but where would the history be then? The struggles we've shared? Sometimes the best times in our lives wreak havoc on our health. Do you want do die like Madonna, still looking like an unblemished 20-year-old female from another planet? Do you need to have perfect white teeth on the day you die of old age?
No. This is the time of decline for both Doris and me. We've made a choice ... actually I've made a choice for both of us. We are going to continue to live the good life. Sure, we'll live clean wherever possible, but mistakes will happen. I'll forget to water Doris. I'll forget to wear a condom. I'll forget to bring Doris in when it's really windy. I'll down a bottle or two of whiskey in an evening.
But we'll survive all this because we have each other. Me and Doris and Boris and tiny little just-off-his-mom's-teat Chuck Norris. I wouldn't change any of them for the world.