Houseplants

I have this succulent in my apartment that looks like a cross between a whimsical garden and a velociraptor. If Sunset Magazine had a Benign Nightmares section, this would fit right in. It’s fun to look at and does all of the emotionally healthy things that houseplants do. But, it didn’t always look like this.

A year ago, I bought it at an Oakland garden store. It was a great deal at $3, as most things are. Sitting in this tiny pot was a tightly wound fibonacci spiral an inch and a half tall. Small but mighty. Best of all, it would add some green to my living room and didn’t require a lot of fuss.

Over the next few months, though, I noticed that it was taking to its new home well, albeit not as tightly wound as it had started its life; the new leaves (Do succulents have leaves?) were growing longer and more spread out, as if it was turning into a new plant entirely. Sitting in this pot was fleshy green evidence of before and after Life with Danny.

In the time since, I have come to accept this--celebrate it even. It is unique. It adds character. It is not what I expected. And, it reminds me of dinosaurs.

Students are similar. They leave their home life, a completely different environment, and come to school daily. When they get here, in many ways they are different. They learn. They grow. They evolve. And sometimes they act like dinosaurs.

Kids act in sometimes-predictable ways. The adventure, though, is in the unpredictable. It’s in how they manage stress and how we can course-correct along the way. It’s in how they adapt to the classroom, to the playground, to the mean words and to the opportunities to lead. Our job is to guide and to advise and to see how they, themselves, grow.

This plant has evolved in real time, adapting to whatever change in environment has made it so. In doing so, it has become an interesting Dr. Seuss-type addition to my home. I thought I was getting one thing, and it has become another. Rather, it has become both. It’s an amalgam of before and after. Kids, too, are some enigmatic combination of home and family and school and learning. They are not the before or the after. They are the during.