In America, our sense of time is warped.
You and I think that things happen in a blink of an eye fast with a simple push or swipe. There is no slow, only convenience and speed. I needed things yesterday and you should’ve known. But we forget that the operative word here is think. You’re made to think that it does.
Because not everything happens that fast.
Behind the swipe of the app are days, months or sometimes even years of work. Behind that work are hundreds of engineers, acres of data centers and the people running it, the electricity that powers everything, the actual people who spend time and effort to create the products and services sold to make it quick and east for all. The people who gathered and made all the materials - steel, plastic, rubber, paper, wood. The people who grew things from seed to sprout to plant to tree to fruit and more. It took time for the ugly duckling to grow into the magnificent swan that it is. Below the one that’s gliding through the water, looking delicate and peaceful, is a furious paddling to push the water and propel forward.
We never see it, but it’s there.
Two years ago, my cousin sent me a box of calamansi fruit from their backyard tree in California. Most fruits made it through the ride inside the USPS parcel. But the others exploded, likely because of the intense Texas summer heat. I squeezed all the juices, collected them in ice cube trays to be frozen and stored for future use. The cogs in my head started turning and I thought I’d save the seeds, so I could grow my own calamansi tree and have easy access to the fruit that unlocked the tastes of home.
My husband calls be “Black Thumb.” All the plants I’ve attempted to care for, mostly basil with dreams of an endless supply for pesto, died. Not even a slow death, but a swift one. For me, growing something from seed, growing any plant, to be honest, is an impossible feat. But I went against that label, collected all the seeds and researched my way to our own calamansi plant.
The YouTube video instructed me to feel off the husk of the seed to reveal its delicate and vulnerable heart, place it on a moistened piece of paper towel and inside a zipper bag. After three days, a little nub reared out its head. Growth! Hope against despair! Each morning, I took a peep in between the sheet to see its progress, anxious that they would die in my care as I was cursed to do so. I felt the growth was not as fast I imagined and wanted it to be.
This made me think about the Seven of Pentacles card. A man, hands atop the handle of his shovel, staring at the growing shrub, bearing pentacles. His face tense from watching the shrub as if it would move at any second. Or perhaps willing it with his mind to move and grow.
Pentacles are the seeds card of the Minor Arcana. They are of this earth, so it pertains to anything earthly, including money, career and health. And in the Seven of Pentacles card, the seeds are already growing, but not quite ripe enough to harvest. It is the card of restless waiting, the resistance to the idea that there are simply things that do take time. After all, it is useless to watch the paint dry.
Often, in these instant times, we forget that.
I moved my calamansi sprouts into pots. They live! The Black Thumb curse is broken! I kept them inside during the cold winter months. Even bought a grow light to make up for the loss of sunshine indoors. When the days got warmer, I moved them back outside, watered them, fed them fertilizer and fruit and vegetable scraps, let them bask in the sunshine. And yet still no fruit. I thought, after two years, I would be plucking green fruit bursting with pucker worthy juice that brings life through a taste of home in my meals and drinks. My calamansi plants look frail and thin.
I read somewhere that pruning would help them grow faster. So earlier in the summer, I snipped off all the leaves until the plants turned bald. Maybe no leaves would mean more growth with calamansi fruit sooner. I read that they loved the heat and believed that this summer would be THE season of harvest.
Every morning, I looked at my calamansi plants. No growth. No leaves. More so, no fruit. Did I just waste all that work? Did they not enjoy this summer’s of three-digit highs? Did I just kill them all? So I moved the pots around, struggling to give them the optimum amount of sunshine, but not too much. I watered them everyday. Even talked to them because they said that plants do listen. “Grow, c’mon, grow! Don’t die on me!” the tone growing more desperate each day.
Then I finally just threw my hands up in surrender and decided to do the bare minimum. I let them be. I passed them instead of hovering, helicoptering over them, instead of watching the paint dry.
Until one day, God blessed North Texas with rain. A much needed downpour that doused the hellfire of summer. Temperatures nudged down from three-digits to two, walking outside felt bearable. Then the following morning, when I checked on my calamansi plants, tiny leaves started popping out.
Hallelujah! Day after day as the temperatures dropped, the more leaves started popping out.
I then realized that maybe the heat wasn’t too great. That the plants did struggle. They are California plants that are not used to summer weather like ours. Then another garden growing friend mentioned that it actually takes eight years for a calamansi plant to bear fruit. What in the world? I’m not even half way there! So why do I even expect that I’d get fruit on returns at this point?
“In God’s Perfect Time” I’ve learned in my Catholic upbringing. It’s rebranded itself into popular culture as “Divine Timing.” But no matter what you call it, things just do take time, a natural wonder, a call to patience just as the Seven of Pentacles tells us.
What I’ve written (other than this!):
I was asked to write about Filipino snacks and drinks by Thrillist for #FAHM or Filipino American History Month. Have you tried any of these? Or are you missing the tastes of home?
After months of working on the story, my feature on Silver Spoon, the oldest Pakistani restaurant in the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex, is finally out. If you live in DFW, drive up and support! I can’t wait to get my plate of Lahori fish again.