It was the last day of summer and I was trying to get done everything I had meant to do all summer long with the children. I would sort through clothes they had outgrown, clean out the clutter from the previous school year, make photo albums from the last two decades and get the tub drain fixed.
Of course, the children had needs too. The boys had haircut appointments, school supplies to purchase and a need for new clothes. We were going to go on an outing, just as soon as the plumber arrived, fixed the tub and left. He was scheduled to be at our house by nine. At 9:30 the dispatcher called to say the plumber had been detained at his first appointment. At 10:30 I called to ask if I should reschedule. The boys had a hair appointment and I had to work to find eyes behind all the hair. The dispatcher said the plumber was on his way.
I don’t know why it still came as a surprise to me, but the tub did not fix itself. The standing water had stayed there. No amount of vinegar, drain-o or boiling water had solved the problem. I had poured enough chemicals into the water that I wondered if the tub would blow up. But nothing had happened. In fact, the water had been there so long a spider had drowned in it and I wondered if mosquitoes would be hatching soon.
My daughter had begged me on her way out the door to get her haircut, “Can you please get the tub fixed before school starts?” She was getting her hair cut with my hairdresser. She was driving there on her own. She had long, lovely teenage hair.
I ran my hand through my own hair. I hadn’t showered yet. I had been up– ready and waiting for the plumber. I was overdo for a hair cut but had had children around and wanted the long appointment. The one that took away the gray, the tired and the meek. In fact it had been so long since I’d gotten my own hair done, that I was almost out of shampoo. It didn’t bother me that the children were using my shower—because their tub was clogged. I think what got me to call the plumber was that they were using my shampoo.
In the meantime, the barber called to say he had double booked a few clients and could we come early.
At eleven, I was about to call and cancel the plumber. The boys had sorted through their old clothes and William was in the middle of cleaning out his backpack. He found a penguin eraser.
“Throw away?” I asked and held open the garbage bag.
“I can’t,” he said, “Ms. Heilmann gave it me.”
“Ms. Heilmann was your teacher two years ago,” I said and examined the papers in the backpack more carefully. He and I were cleaning out his backpack from the previous school year.
The door bell rang. I stepped over piles of clothes and paper and books and went to get the door. I yelled at the boys to clean up the hall and for William to get his football gear together, fill up his water bottles and find his cleats. We would have to take him to practice after we got school supplies. There wouldn’t be time to come home.
I opened the front door and tried to compose myself. “How fast can you fix a tub?” I wanted to say.
“Come on in,” I said forcing a smile, as if I were some calm woman on any normal day. Instantly, I noticed his teeth. Several of his front teeth were chipped off. He was hunched over and made eye-contact reluctantly.
“Name’s Sam,” he said. His handshake was surprisingly firm and warm.
Sam moved carefully into the house, stepped in, walked behind me, many paces behind me, and followed me up the stairs to the children’s tub.
“The water’s been there for a while,” I said.
“Drain looks clogged,” Sam said.
“Yes, it looks that way,” I said thinking I should have removed the floating, dead spider.
“We have a barber’s appointment in an hour,” I said. “Tomorrow’s the first day of school.” This was supposed to excuse me from being patient or kind. I was doing my best not to say, “Can you fix the tub quickly and leave?”
“Doesn’t look like you put any chemicals in here recently,” he said.
“It was a while ago,” I said. I didn’t want to tell him how long the tub had been clogged. Don’t ask, I thought. Please don’t ask me how long it’s been clogged.
“I’ll need you to sign this form saying it’s been over 48 hours since you put anything into it.”
“Oh, it’s definitely been more than 48 hours,” I said.
Carefully, Sam took out a form from his clip-board and handed me a pen.
I watched him jiggle the knob that regulates the up-down of the drain stopper.
“It’s made of plastic,” he said. “I don’t want to break it. Usually we run a snake through here, and it’s easy. This one, I may have to try the drain. It’s trickier.” Then Sam proceeded to tell me how the drain is shaped, how the snake has to travel and how the snake is made to make it up and around and over successfully.
I worked on taking a deep breath.
“One time,” and this is when I should have been quiet, but I was thinking maybe I could hurry the process a long, “One time, when this drain was clogged the plumber cleared it from the roof.”
Sam nodded. “Not allowed to do that, not without another plumber. Insurance reasons.” Then he sited the code number for the insurance ordinance. “It requires two plumbers. One to hold the ladder.”
I took another breath and thought of the old joke, how many plumbers does it take to unclog a tub?
Be nice, I told myself, he’s here to help you.
“Well,” Sam sighed. “I think I’ll go down to my truck and get the snake. Just need you to fill out some paper work.”
Sam wrote up the estimate while I yelled to the boys to put their gear in the car. He handed me the clip-bored.
Please just do the work I thought, scribbling my name.
Sam was squatted down on the floor of the bathroom by the tub waiting for me to hand him back his clip-board.
“That’s a Miltoniopsis,” he said.
“What is?” I asked.
“That’s a Miltoniopsis,” Sam said again. “It’s a Miltoniopsis Robert Jackson, also known as “Wild Thing.””
On the back of the toilet sat a clay pot which held a drooping, flowerless orchid plant.
“I like orchids,” Sam said.
“It looks terrible,” I said. Its leaves cried out for water. I grabbed the plant and ran water into it from the sink. It had been calling out to me for days to water it. Maybe it had been weeks. I had a slowly dying creature in the house, “Water, water,” it begged. And I hadn’t listened. This was the trouble with owning plants. You fall in love with them at the store, you bring them home and then they make you feel guilty.
“This one does better outside,” Sam said. “It needs more light than it’s getting here. It would do better on the east side of the house. Afternoon sun would be too hot.”
“I can’t get it to bloom again,” I said. “I know, more water would help.”
“I like to mix plant food with the water, 10, 10, 10 or 20, 20, 20.” It helps them flower again.
“Ok,” I said looking at the tub, thinking about the boys’ hair appointment.
“Took Mom to an orchid class last night,” Sam said. “Mom likes orchids too. Gets her out, something to do.” Sam picked up the plant from the sink.
“It’s good you got it in this pot with the holes in it, they like the ventilation.” He turned the plant. “Needs more sun.”
Sam put the plant back in the sink to drain and started down the stairs to get his equipment.
“Sometimes I can’t walk by an orchid without buying it,” I confessed to him.
“I know what you mean,” Sam said. “I’ve got several hundred.”
“You have several hundred orchids?” I said stopping on the stairs.
I followed Sam out to his truck.
“I bought one once at a nursery on the way back up the coast just north of San Diego.” Sam said the Latin name but it was long and I couldn’t make it out.
“When it stopped flowering, I bought another one,” Sam smiled like a boy in love, chipped teeth and all. He looked me straight in the eye, confessing his love. I think he may have even blushed. “Then I decided I wanted to always have an orchid in bloom.”
“Do you?” I asked.
“I do,” he said like a man proud to be married to something he loves.
Sam carried the electric snake into the house. While he was upstairs working, my daughter came home from having her hair done. She was fluffy and light on her foot and lovely.
“Someone came into the hairdresser while I was having my hair done and asked if I was a model,” she said and twirled her lovely, long curls in the kitchen.
“I had to park half way done the street,” she said. “Someone parked in my spot.”
“That someone is fixing your tub,” I said.
“Thank you,” she said meekly.
When Sam came downstairs for me to pay, he and I sat at the kitchen table.
“Drain’s fixed,” Sam said.
“Mom, we really need to go,” the boys said.
While Sam was working, I had gathered up my neglected orchids and lined the plants in their pots on the kitchen table. I felt like I was confessing my sins.
“Mom,” the boys called to me in unison.
“You can wait,” I told them.
Sam sat there and told me the name of each orchid, when it bloomed and what it needed. With one orchid, I had tucked it outside by a flower sprinkler hoping it would get water– that way I wouldn’t have to listen to it anymore. I had considered throwing it away, but I couldn’t throw it away alive, just because it wasn’t blooming anymore. What if someone did that to me? She’s definitely not blooming, we’ll toss her out —gray hairs, roots showing, months since she’s had any water or fertilizer.
“Little bit of fertilizer and she’ll pop right back. She’ll bloom again,” Sam said as if he had read my thoughts. He smiled at me that tooth-chipped smile and I blushed.
“Looks like a snails been nibbling this one,” Sam said touching a leaf full of holes. He told me to use clean scissors to trim orchids and not to use them on other plants because diseases can be spread that way. He showed me where to cut.
One orchid he couldn’t identify so he went to his truck and returned with a worn book on orchids. He found the plant immediately, told me the name and then turned the page to show me a picture of a butterfly orchid he had that he loved.
Then he told me about his mother. She had an orchid that she seemed to keep blooming. It was four feet high, he said.
“Does she talk to her plants?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” Sam said. “But last night at the class, a student came up to Mom to tell her his troubles with an orchid he had and you know what she said? She said, “Well, are you talking to it?” So I suppose she is.”
Sam thumped on his orchid book. “It helps with the stress,” Sam said.
Maybe it does, I thought as I watched Sam drive away and loaded the boys in the car.
A month later, I found myself standing in my bathtub, not with a plumbing problem, but with an orchid problem. I was trying to figure out how to feed them. I had purchased the orchid food like Sam had recommended 20-20-20 and mixed it with water in an old plastic bucket. I had filled my tub with flowerless orchid plants. I was barefoot and rolled up my jeans and stepped in. I had never taken a bath with orchids before. Carefully, I wiped dust off the leaves—like one might approach a lover one has neglected. I pulled off dead leaves and noticed where snails had nibbled another. I took an accounting of where we were. As I poured the nutrient rich water into their soil, I talked to them– at first quietly, then with more affection.
“You will bloom again, just you wait, you will.” I watched the water drain through their soil, through their roots and into the tub. I felt like I had become a wild thing– barefoot in a bathtub talking to plants, but it felt like a good way to start a new year—a bit crazy, apologetic and returning to love.
“I love you now when you are mostly leaves,” I cooed, “and I will love you when you’re flowering and I will love you when you no longer bloom.”
Sunlight poured through my bathroom window and I could hear the orchids sigh.