The 20-Year Cactus Return
How getting "older" changes our sense of time
Last weekend, I bought a plant. Understand: I’ve been on a strict No New Plants diet for six months now. Picking up the spiky knob in its cube of soil and plastic, I felt giddy, high.
I shot Ed a look. “It’s just a tiny one.”
The ends of his mustache rose with his grin. He said what he often says, a phrase that’s a keystone in the enduring peace of our partnership: “Do what you want, baby!”
(If you, like me, have struggled for permission to follow or even admit to your desires, what sentence could be more loving and powerful? And he doesn’t even KNOW that’s what he’s doing; he’s just a laid-back, supportive person by default.)
I asked the store owner which baby cactus to buy if I wanted an epic tree-sized column—but not for a while. A plant wizard, he provided a comparative analysis of several species. As I picked up a four inch columnar cactus, he noted that it would grow slowly, eventually branching from the base to form a bushy structure. (Full disclosure: I’m traveling now and can’t remember which species it was. So let’s call it a type of Cephalocereus or Stenocereus, and next week I’ll let you know how wrong my guess was).
After about 20 years, he said, this species produces white or gray hairlike growths, and the hairs serve a purpose: protecting its fruit from frost and heat.
I thought: So in 20 years this cactus, like me, will look old. But that wizened hair will guard the fruits of long labor and a slow-weathered, love-scarred skin? So the cactus is EVERYTHING. Cool. I’ll take it.
And I thought, 20 years? No biggie. That’s not even very long.
Recently, I’ve begun to imagine life on a timescale longer than two or three years, which for ages was as far in front of me as I could bear to look. In 20 years, I’ll be 62. What do I want to build by then, and with whom? Who do I want to become? For one thing, I’d like to have a yard where this cactus could stay and flourish, planted solidly in the ground.
The ability to imagine a deeper future leads to new, unrecognizable behaviors: putting money in an IRA; thinking about buying a house and staying in one town; strategizing a career that might sustain me through the harebrained crapshoot that is publishing books; picturing staying with the same person for many years (without terror).
I realize other people hit this phase in their early to mid-30’s, if not sooner, but I’m a slow healer. Only after 40 did I begin to clear these hurdles.
I guess you might call such choices…life planning? Thinking ahead? Strategy? Ideas I might’ve scoffed at in my 20’s now seem not only prudent but natural. It’s as if, having survived this far on improv, I’ll permit some light scripting of the show’s second act—while knowing that most plans change and that life, like death or because of death, is fundamentally beyond our control. Seeing wildfire taught me that.
Twenty years is how long it took to get my writing career off the ground. Multiple dear friendships have passed or are nearing their 20-year anniversaries. It’s been 20 years since Apple launched iTunes, since Michael Jordan retired, since people started calling pomegranate a “superfood.” Since a U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq.
134 million people were born in 2003, and those who survived life’s beginnings are 20 years old, clawing their way into a time they mistake for adulthood, not realizing it’ll take another decade, and they might as well fuck around. At the time, 2003 was the hottest year on record, a statistic that now sounds laughable. Nobody had heard of a megafire. Time is wild.
This little cactus offers a 20-year return on the investment of time, soil, sunlight, and patience. I’m old enough now, and still enough, and slow enough, that that kind of commitment doesn’t faze me. I see a two-decade timeline to fruit and think, Yeah, sure. I can water this plant until Chat GPT sounds as passé as iTunes.
One key epiphany of so-called middle age is knowing you don’t have forever, that — and one can feel this with a positive urgency — time is running out. So the boss move is choosing, in the time we’ve got, to commit to the habits that grow.
If the Cephalocereus (or whatever it is) endures, I’m willing to water this cactus for the rest of my life. Like every tending routine, the practice of watering is a relationship between living things, a love act. But you know this. You’re plant people.
Last week, we saw a wildfire in the hills above Santa Paula, just a few miles from home. Seeing a December fire torching, cresting the ridge, aircraft hovering (at night! night aircraft, what?!) gave me so many feelings. Maybe I’ll write about it later.
This week, I’m editing a friend’s (brilliant!) manuscript about psychics in Sedona, which led me to stumble upon this story about cults and tragedy. Otherwise, I’ve been reading a woo-woo book about money mindset. My new favorite block in Ventura boasts a coffee shop, an indie bookstore, and the marvelous Plant Shop 805.
Be well, shift your plants into the sun’s limited winter arc, and if you want to, go ahead and buy the cactus.
Do what you want. Baby.
Love,
Kelly