On May 9, 1985, my cousin Janet came to my house for dinner, and we ate the fruit of an avocado in a salad. After dinner I carefully scrubbed the lustrous skin of the dark avocado seed, removing all the pulpy mush, and poured water in a glass one of my roommates had stolen from the Northwestern food service. I stuck three toothpicks into the skin of the pit and, using these as a brace, balanced the seed in the glass so its top was out of the water and the bottom was immersed. I learned this trick from a crazy acquaintance of mine who felt a personal responsibility to sprout the seed of every fruit she brought into the house. I saw her apartment only once but remember distinctly how thick pits clung to toothpicks in coffee mugs, grapefruit seeds incubated under damp paper towels, and other bits of produce sprouted from the dirt inside Styrofoam cups. I found her devotion to the genetic success of fruit vaguely scary, but her germination techniques seemed to work.
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The day after our dinner Janet gave birth to her first child, Sarah Nell. The avocado pit from our salad sprouted, and I planted it in a six-inch-diameter pot, which it outgrew in less than a year. For a couple of years it didn’t look like much to the casual observer. But its growth thrilled me–it was the only houseplant I’d ever grown from seed. I reveled in the way the leaves would emerge shiny and slick from the inner wetness of the stalk, unexposed yet to the dust and pollution that gradually dulled the rest of my plants.
In a decade the avocado has grown into a rangy, wild-looking plant with foot-long leaves. It’s so tall now that its top leaves would brush the 11-foot ceiling of my living room if I didn’t snip it back occasionally. It seems to think it resides in a dark forest, where it’s in a tree’s best interest to grow tall as fast as possible or perish for lack of light. It sends spindly branches shooting wildly toward the ceiling, thinking that if they just reach high enough, they’ll find more sunlight.
Next week Sarah Nell and my avocado both turn ten. She’s not as tall as it is, but her verbal skills are better. Luckily, Janet and I are not competitive about our children. I wish them both happy birthday and long, syndrome-free lives.
