Ledebouria
Last weekend AK and I hosted an outdoor brunch for our close friends. CHEESE. So much cheese. With an extension cord wrapped around the house, we plugged in our tabletop raclette grill: a hot marble slab sits on top of a burner, underneath which sit small trays for melting cheese. It’s sort of a hybrid of griddle and fondue, where everybody has their own space to melt their cheese of choice, grill their own meat & veg.
We gave our friends fresh eggs from our coop and they gifted us this Ledebouria start (in nifty rooster glass). The plant came with a special story—perhaps retains a special spirit. I hope I retell it correctly and that I’m not getting anyone in trouble or speaking out of turn. Well, I think enough time has passed…
Twenty-five years ago, our friends were invited to a birthday party for Robin Williams’s son. They were friends with the family’s helper at the time, who gave them the Ledebouria start from the Williams’ garden. Our friends brought the plant from San Francisco to their garden in Los Angeles. Now a piece resides with us.
I don’t pretend to suddenly have some deep connection to the Williams family. It’s a piece of a piece from a friend of a friend, etcetera. But it’s a living visual tribute and trigger. A good trigger. I’ll remember our friends, our brunch. The breeze, the cheese. (I didn’t mean for that to rhyme). I’ll think of Robin. The talent, of course. Yes, the suicide and depression. How that hits close to home.
I’ve thought to write, many times, about my own lifelong experience with depression and anxiety. Poet Alice Notley writes in her poem C. ‘81, I can’t get at the poem of this. I think of that line now. I can’t get at the story of it—my own psychology of being. I’ve tried poetry and creative nonfiction. I tried entering into it through a craft essay. It was very long and took three years to whittle down, get published. It’s here now, thanks to Allium Journal at Columbia College Chicago. It tells a story, hedges around a bit, but doesn’t get there.
I just don’t need to write it. Not now. I take it outside. We’re just shy of an acre and that’s enough to distract and then some. I’ve been planting it for eight years and so much of what’s here has a memory attached to it. Good triggers and good distractions. All the trees and perennials receive an aluminum tag so at least I don’t forget what I’ve planted. The stories I’ll do my best to remember—and as with all remembering, I’ll also wonder who and what is all the remembering for.
When we moved to Los Angeles from the midwest, I couldn’t bring my great-grandmother’s white lilac. I don’t have memories of her, but I wanted to carry the meaning of her. I bought a white lilac, and it’s doing great, but it doesn’t carry a story. It will look like grandma’s, smell like hers, but looking at it and touching it doesn’t trigger that particular origin story. Maybe my origin story will become my lilac’s. Maybe it can be a lilac without a story, and how incredible would that still be!
Still, I’ve long been curious how many people have a plant in their collection that carries special meaning. For dozens of plants in our yard, I could at least tell where they came from. Which plant nursery and whom I was with. Where I apprehended a cutting when no one was watching. And I’m just as likely to share a cutting too. This Ledebouria already has me wondering who’ll want a division of its bulbs when it spreads. And if I share the origin story along with it, create that meaning for it, how far will that spread beyond and without me? If that happens, and brings something meaningful to the storyteller, how fascinating! But a plant is a plant is a plant, and that’s plenty.