The Yucca
I removed a large plant, a yucca to be precise, from my front yard this week. It was the last plant left in the garden. It was a particularly hard job to get out and Kevin, the miniature dachshund, was no help. All other plants had been removed for the landscaping we’re doing in at the moment. I had kept this yucca because of the gorgeous flower that would spring up during the summer. The flower stalk would rise slowly over several weeks and then unfurl into beautiful white petals that glowed for a few days.
The year my daughter Piper was born, two flower stalks grew, presenting us with a pair of 6 foot tall flower guardians at our front door each day. The following two years we were blessed by this sight when the days began to lengthen and sun burned hot.
We were lucky with Piper. She was conceived via IVF after two years of unsuccessful attempts. But the first embryo we transferred took and a little over 9 months later, sweet little Piper was with us. The next two years were filled with learning for us. For me most, I think. I say this knowing full well that Piper learned to do all basic human functions during this time.
My transition to fatherhood was challenging. I figured I would swing into it with ease. In reality, I collapsed into it with great difficulty. I didn’t know what I was getting in to. At all. Nothing was familiar. Nothing went how I thought it would. I made many mistakes. Though I learned from them. I’m still learning from them now but I am better at being a dad now.
I still need to say yes more often, though.
We started trying for our second child, roughly 18 months after Piper was born. We, again, were unsuccessful in falling pregnant naturally. The three little embryos we had left were prepared and ready to go. We planned what we would do with the two we would have left over. Donate them to science, keep them just in case, or perhaps destroy them when we were satisfied with our little family. So many choices to make.
These plans did not come into action. Our second transfer was not successful.
We had planned for everything except this. Considering how damaging this was, I suppose I should have been more prepared for the third not hold as well.
I was not.
We had one embryo left. It was untested. A wild card we didn’t think we’d need to draw. But we did. Our future was in the hands of this tiny piece of science. Our planning discussions were different now. Would we spend the money and do more rounds and collections? Would Piper be an only child? Or perhaps we would look into adoption?
When you do a transfer, you have to wait two weeks before doing a test. This wait is always a pensive, burdensome two weeks. This time, however, it was excruciating. Our vision of the future relied on it. Everything we had thought our life would be was resting on it. Our money choices. Work choices. what our family would look like. What we thought out… everything.
It was the start of the second week. Hayley and I were in Piper’s room. The little girl had just woken up, and we were chatting with her and tidying up.
“There’s three,” I said. The yucca had three stalks of flowers. I thought little of it.
“That’s a sign.” Hayley said. “One for Kevin, one for Piper, and one for whoever this is.”
I’d like to say that I knew Ted was coming from that point, but IVF never gives that sort of security.
At the end of the week, we did the pregnancy test. Hayley recorded it. I thought she was sure things were going to be positive, but she told me later she was terrified. Desperate to do anything that would make the dream come true. It worked, I suppose. The test was positive. She was pregnant. While the next year was not a smooth trouble free time, by the following summer our son, Theodore, was with us. He is a sweet little thing. Adventurous and cheeky and inquisitive. A gift to our family.
Which brings me back to the yucca. It didn’t flower the summer after he was born. I thought at the time it was a once off. But it didn’t flower again the next.
I thought perhaps it had come to the end of its run. It was the last plant in the front yard and I’d kept it because of its prophetic abilities. But they had stopped, and it was time to go. Clearly, it was dead or dying and of no use to anyone anymore. As I dug into the soil and pushed the immense trunk from side to side, I felt a strange sense of change. As if the act of removing the plant was a part of a bigger plan. Removing the top of the supposedly dead plant was easy. In removing the root system, I learned how deeply woven it was to the ground. Roots burrowed two feet down and spread out over a metre in diameter.
It wasn’t dying.
It had just passed its growth and its flowering to us. It had gifted us with its natural beauty. A sign of the symbiotic relationship between humans and nature.
Obviously, I’d come so far into the removal of the plant I couldn’t save it as it was. A brief pang of guilt washed over me. Once again, homo sapiens had destroyed life for the sake of their own.
While the old yucca was gone, there are now three pots with cuttings of the root system in them. Three little stems that have cracked the surface of the soil. Three little stems that will grow into the prophetic life giving flower bearers that their mother was.
I write these words in the early hours of the morning in my notebook with my sleeping son in my arms. Some unspoken ailment keeps him awake and only physical touch will soothe him. Much like the yucca gave its energy to us. We give our energy to the little ones so they can grow.
Stuart.