The Story of the Jade

Friday, 01 January 2010 20:15 Written by Lezlie Laws

A year or so ago, I was moving a beautiful potted jade plant from one side of the yard to the other.  It was a tight, full cluster of squat limbs; the thick, succulent leaves were a rich shiny green.  On the trek across my tiny yard, I dropped the pot.  It did not break, but the plant spilled out of the nicely mossed Guy Wolfe pot and split into chunks.  Limbs broke.  Leaves feel off.  Shallow roots were exposed.  The jade lay strewn on the grass, a total mess.  I gasped at the loss of this favorite plant.  Hoping to save some part of it, I picked up the big pieces and put them back into the pot, packed the spilled soil around the roots.  It looked just awful, all a-jumble in the pot.  What had been an elegant, gorgeous specimen now looked like a collection of mismatched skinny limbs, the symmetry and boldness of the plant gone.   In a matter of seconds a stunning, thriving plant was reduced to disarray. Though still alive, it had little appeal.

     Still, I couldn’t get rid of it.  It had been with me for many years.  I put it in a remote part of the yard and watered and fed it over the next few months, though I really doubted those few roots would be able to take hold again.  For the longest time, those few branches did not change, but hunkered in the pot stoically.  Once or twice I carefully pushed a thin stake into the soil to hold a twisted limb in place and keep the pot from toppling again.  But mostly I just let the jade alone, hoping it was working its own magic.  But for months it remained damaged and disoriented, stunned into quiescence by its tragedy. 

     Time passed, as is its wont. 

     Today is January 1, 2010, the beginning of a new decade.  I was awakened by a gentle rain today, and took the luxury of lingering in bed a while, just listening. Wondering what on earth this decade would bring,  I prayed for skills to accept the challenges ahead of me with simplicity, equanimity, and an open heart.   When I came downstairs to make coffee, I spent a few minutes at the back windows, surveying the yard after the rain, always a joy.  The jade plant is on the deck now, alive and well, thriving in its original pot.  But you wouldn’t recognize it as the same plant that took the awful spill a year ago.  It has fewer branches than it did before, but those branches have stretched gracefully toward the sky, looking like a group of long, slender arms making petition to the gods.  Solidly grounded now, it has a lovely symmetry, and possesses a new relationship both to the pot and to the space it inhabits.  It is a new plant with a larger presence than before, an eager reach outward. 

    As I stood looking out at the lushness of my tiny garden, I thought how wonderful to know the jade weathered its disaster and recreated itself.  Out of its own dark dormancy it has transformed into something new.