FUCHSIA

I think I have made some significant progress toward atonement for a past wrong. It’s a little too soon to tell for certain, but the very real possibility of at last being able to make amends has got me singing from the peak of optimism. It’s a heavy burden indeed, the burden of guilt. It’s weight increases with the passage of time.
The crime I committed was not entirely unintentional. There were days, long ago, when time hung heavy on my hands. I was in the middle of a life transition, too tall to stand erect underneath the kitchen table, too short to be employed at the sink for the washing and drying of dishes. Back behind the kitchen table I would wander. Kneeling backwards on a kitchen chair, knees digging into the red leatherette upholstery, I would rest my chin on the cool metal studs that secured the covering to the chair back. And then, while Mother and Sisters busied themselves at the sink, I would lift my chin and sink my upper teeth into the soft leatherette just in front of the metal studs. Raising my chin yet again, I would hover in deep contemplation, admiring the craggy imprint of my own personal signature.
I was an inexperienced criminal in those days, realizing too late that the evidence would speak for itself. When the long arm of the law reached out to capture me, it extracted a promise that I would never again attack an innocent chair. It is a promise I have kept to this day. Red leatherette upholstery, I assure you, has been safe with me. My atonement came off without a hitch. Not so easily were other reparations made.
Behind that same chrome and arberite table, behind the backs of the red leatherette chairs stood a pair of south-facing windows, their wide sills bathed in the winter sun and shaded from the summer blast by the shadow from the veranda roof. On the sills stood old kitchen saucers to catch the water dripping from the bottoms of the clay pots that held geraniums and fuchsias. The hardy pungent geraniums were safe in my presence, the delicate fuchsias—not so much.
The fuchsia itself was of little interest to me. But the blossoms were another matter entirely. A healthy fuchsia dangles fancy blossoms. They will wave on the slightest breeze like crystals on a chandelier. They’ll sway if you blow on them. They’ll swing like little children at a playground if you push on the branches. But if you push hard on the branches, they fall off. In those cases, if you are under six and already have a criminal record of upholstery damage, it is best to crush the fallen blooms and cram them down heat register in the hope that the evidence will be permanently incinerated in the furnace below.
One or two blossoms off a healthy fuchsia are apparently not missed by adults. But a fuchsia also holds other possibilities. The delicate fuchsia flower begins its life as a tiny bud, shaped at first like the bean from a can of pork and beans. If you check its progress several times a day, you’ll find that as it grows longer, it also grows fatter. And if you are the kind of person who has always wanted to squish a pork and bean between finger and thumb to find out what would happen, and if your pork and bean squishing urge has been thwarted by the presence of adults at the table, you might find it extremely difficult to resist the temptation to squish a fuchsia bud when the adults are at the sink. This is what happened to me.
I can report that a fuchsia bud handled in this manner makes a satisfying pop, like a midget balloon, not quite loud enough to be heard from the sink. A fuchsia, I have learned, is not quite so able as chair upholstery to report an assault and bring the aggressor to justice. The long arm of the law did not accost me. But I was not completely absolved. In fact, my punishment did not begin until several years later when, as an adult, I began to realize that I had inherited a deep and enduring desire to nurture plants. Thus began my crusade to assuage my guilt by enhancing the life of a fuchsia.
“Let’s get a fuchsia,” I said to David. “Mom used to grow fuchsias in the south window when I was a kid.”
We got a beautiful fuchsia and hung it in the living room over the stair rail. Within a week it had dropped all its flowers and most of its new buds. Before a second week had passed we were vacuuming up the leaves. So we took it down and hung a Swedish ivy instead, but we did not give up on fuchsias.
We hung a beautiful fuchsia on the awning support outside the front door. It was warm there, and a bit sheltered. Within a week the summer sun had toasted it to a crispy golden brown. We took it down. But we didn’t give up on fuchsias.
Not quite defeated, we accepted a stem cutting as a gift from a friend who said her fuchsia had been in the family for years. The cutting rooted easily enough. When the future of the plant looked most promising, we gave it a berth among the healthy crowd that flourished in the greenhouse window. There it set a record for shortness of life in our greenhouse window. Still, we did not give up on fuchsia.
We hung a healthy fuchsia from the eves trough of the garage. Not wanting it to be alone, we placed it securely beside a healthy hanging begonia. It hadn’t been there more than a week when a summer storm with more wind than the big bad wolf blew it down and smashed it on the ground. Begonias also hate wind. Nevertheless, the begonia remained smugly in its place, sporting new blooms the following week. From that day forward, whenever David gazed longingly at a healthy fuchsia, I became the fuchsia’s advocate and persuaded him not to put it in my care. Still working on that earliest guilt, with so many additional assaults piled on top, I declared that I had done enough damage to the species.
But then, last Saturday, my resolve again crumbled. There is so much wonderful stuff at the outdoor market! We bought peas. We bought carrots. We bought new potatoes and the last of the asparagus. We got cherries. We hoisted a basket of freshly picked strawberries. Bill The Baker sold us some homemade bread. And then--we bought a healthy fuchsia. We’ve changed houses since the last time we tried.
The fuchsia was a beauty, hanging resplendent with ornate flowers and pregnant with swelling buds. It was just the kind of plant that tends to look a lot worse after the journey home. And yet--it was hardly damaged at all when the grower stuffed it I into a market bag. It didn’t tip over or slide around during the car trip home. Nobody dropped it or fell over it when we got it out of the car. I began to hope.
With the same level of gentle care we gave on the day we escorted our first baby home from the hospital, We gingerly positioned the fuchsia pot in a pedestal crystal bowl on a cocktail table between two lawn chairs. The chairs stand away from the house, visible from our bedroom window, on the brick patio at the bottom of the front yard. Sheltered by hedges to the north and west, protected from aloft by the spreading branches of an ancient elm, it was perfectly situated to catch the gentle rays of morning sun.
“There,” I said, when the pot was placed. “This could be the perfect spot for a fuchsia.” Fate, apparently, decided to waste no time before planning a test of my theory.
From out of nowhere there blew a summer storm, black and ferocious and terrifying. Like a locomotive without brakes it seized the yard, west winds driving torrential rain across the eight-foot veranda and into the house via the front door. Leaves flew. Branches snapped. Overwhelmed by water pouring off the roof the luscious geranium flowers hung their heads. My optimism appeared to have been premature. But amid the tempest the fuchsia stood its ground, lofty and unassaulted on its pedestal as water pooled on the table beneath. And then, as if one was not enough, there were more storms.
Our fuchsia stood the test. Of course, we are not out of the woods yet. Who knows how it might end? There still could be hungry insects, or hail the size of baseballs. We might forget to water, or perhaps a visiting child will spend an unsupervised moment reaching out for the buds from one of the temptingly placed lawn chairs. Still, given the force of that storm, and the other storms that followed it in rapid succession, I do dare to hope that the spell has been broken, that I will earn the reputation of one who helped prolong the life and foster the beauty of a fuchsia.