30 Days 30 Stories, Installment 18, Why the Basil Plant Lived

It may not seem like very much, just a life. But for me the day the basil plant lived was a wonderful day in my life. It meant mercy, and it meant redemption, and it meant that I could go on.

I wasn't doing very well. My boyfriend, who I had been living with for some years, had left me, and I had been laid off in a horrible economy. I wasn't sure what to do, and I really wasn't sure how to do it. But somehow I did - I was looking for a job, I moved in temporarily, with a friend for some minimal rent and took up a temp job. And I stopped crying and eating ice cream for dinner every night after a few months.

My cat was old, but she was loyal. She would often sit on my lap, and purr, and be generally nice to me when I was sniveling with self-loathing. It took a while of cat/ice-cream/movie therapy, but I did start actually making dinner again. Finally.

And so I bought a basil plant. They are simple, easy plants (usually) and I thought it really wouldn't be very difficult to care for. I watered it, I fed it with some mulch. That's all they need. But then my ex called. Everything shut down for about a week. I forgot everything. My cat is really lucky she even got her food dish filled a few times. He was getting married, and I was miserable, and everything was absolutely horrible. And I had killed my basil plant, I thought.

I sat there, looking blankly at it, my eyes filling with tears (again). This wasn't possible. Everything gone with a few horrible words. Well, wonderful for them, I guessed. But not for me, now hidden in a little sterile corner of never-ending gloom, accompanied by my dry and dead basil plant. It's leaves looked completely wilted, and the stems drooped horribly. It was like a spider that had curled up in the corner, dead.

I realized suddenly that the horrible noise in my ears was my cat's loud meows, so I filled up her empty water dish, and moving back to put it down, broke it. I swore, my cat ran, and water was everywhere, it seemed to have splashed on every possible surface in the kitchen; I even saw drops of it on the window pane. I didn't have the heart to clean it up. I left the pieces where they were, and filled up a shallow cereal bowl for Lucy, set it down in the clear, and went back to bed.

The next day was Sunday, and when I went to get a drink of water, my feet crunched on glass in their slippers. I nearly started crying again. Then I looked at the basil plant. It was perkier, it was happier, it needed water, but it was altogether doing much better. It seemed back from the dead. And so, perhaps, was I.

The reason why the basil plant lived, of course, is pretty clear - water can do miraculous things - but it is also because I think I needed it to live. It lived and so I had some hope. And a little hope, like a little water, can do quite a bit.