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What the Light Would Do, Part III
Kitchen, Late Afternoon/Early Evening
The kitchen in the house I grew up in had two windows. One faced north and the other faced west. Although the house was built as a part of a 1950s post-war tract housing development, each of the nearly identical houses was set a little forward or back of the house next to it. Because of this, the kitchen was directly exposed to the setting sun, and in the late afternoon or early evening, strong western light would enter in through the window over the sink and fill the kitchen with a red-gold glow. The sun shone directly onto the kitchen table, and unless your back was to the window, it would be in your eyes. My mother would often draw the shade on that window in the evening, but I always liked the kitchen best when it was ablaze with evening sun, even if blinded me and made it uncomfortable to see and interact with other people at the table. Somehow the western sky and the golden glow made the kitchen feel a part of something large and dramatic and expansive. It signaled, too, that a large part of the day’s activities had been completed (successfully, satisfyingly), yet the greater part of the evening was yet to come, and there was still time to drink deeply of this day.

In that western window, the proverbial window over the sink, my mother had a few potted plants. The window sills were not very deep, so they were of necessity small plants in small containers. The cast of characters on that window sill changed a little over the years, but there were three or four plants that made their home on that window sill for a long, long time. The younger of my two brothers was born in 1957, and as a new baby gift, a friend had given my parents a cute little ceramic planter shaped like a telephone, containing a small, short-variety sansevieria. The volume of this planter had to be no larger than that of your average bone-china teacup—but that snake plant sat on that window sill in that planter for 48 years, growing the entire time. The planter did not even have a drainage hole, and at some point after the first decade or so, I’m sure the soil, or what was left of it, became completely depleted. But there it grew. At the time my mother moved, in 2005, there were two other snake plants, of the taller variety, that had probably inhabited that sunny window sill for a couple of decades at least, along with a tired-looking purple tradescantia.

A month or two after my mother passed away earlier this year, I took a deep breath and repotted those four plants. I selected beautiful purple, periwinkle, aqua and green planters, shocked the heck out of the plants by removing them from their too-tight but very broken-in shoes, and potted them up with fresh soil and plenty of room to grow. Having no properly sunny window sills that would accommodate them at home, I’ve taken them to my office. I have a northern exposure there, but the building is skewed to the west just enough so that at this time of year, the setting western sun comes streaming in. After a few weeks of confusion, the plants have begun to get used to their new home and green up. There are new leaves on all of them (the contents of the little telephone planter having been split into three separate but color-coordinated pots), and sometimes they seem to be smiling as they bask in the deep golden setting sun. I love looking at them, because they remind me of that kitchen, and because they speak of longevity and survival. At the close of the work day, when the sun is filling the back of my office with strong, golden light, I remember what the late afternoon and early evening was like in Parma Ohio, in a kitchen that seemed a part of something large and dramatic and expansive. It feels good to know it’s the same sun, shining on the same plants. I wonder how long they’ll be in this set of pots.