This spider plant is my most prized possession (besides my engagement ring). It was a gift from a friend I used to work with at Starbucks. We did a plant swap one day and each brought each other cuttings of plants we had at home. I was all about growing Tradescantia at that time, and he had a huge spider plant that was having babies that needed a good home. I’ve had that spider plant for going on about 5 years now.
I don’t have any pictures of it as a baby plant. I only recently got into documenting my plant’s growth in Planta. It looks sort of like a big protective mother next to my tradescantia. The spider plant is on the left, and the tradescantia is on the right.
I nurtured the shit out of that baby spider plant. It got a special spot in the center of the bay window at my apartment. It slowly, slowly grew. My experience of spider plants has been that they’re pretty resilient in many light situations, but really thrive in bright (if somewhat indirect) sunlight.
After about a year, my spidey started to shoot out these stem-looking things. They were much much thinner than its usual thick, rectangular leaves ending in points. I wasn’t sure what to make of these little stemmy things. I kept taking care of the plant and watching the stems grow.
Eventually, my spider plant flowered. I was thrilled. I don’t often keep flowering plants intentionally, because I find it too sad when the flowers eventually slough off and die. Indeed, these spider plant flowers were very short-lived. They only made it a few days before they fell off of the stemmy things from which they sprang. I shrugged it off. I wasn’t too-too disappointed because hey, at least I had seen the plant flower!
Until this happened. See the stem-looking thing below? And the tiny, miniature-spider-plant-looking things coming off of the stem?
Up until this point, I’d only had experience with taking cuttings of Tradescantia and using that to grow new plants. I was generally familiar with the idea that you could take cuttings of many plants and make new ones. But the fact that spider plants so neatly shot out these long stems and then produced smaller spider plants just entranced me.
So I harvested some of the babies. I gave them to friends. I propagated some in water. I propagated some in fresh soil. My original spider plant (or Spidey Siren, as she’s named in my plant app) now had children growing next to her in the pot. Some of her babies were in new homes with my friends. I still visit those plants occasionally. My plant-loving friends and I almost always start every reunion with a full report on how all our plants are doing.
Spidey siren is in the blue pot in this picture. Everything to the left of her is her kids.
I now have no fewer than 3 large child spider plants, all coming from the same baby plant that my Starbucks friend gave me all those years ago. These spideys are on their second round of babies, too. Some are healthier than others, but still, spider plants abound in my household.
I consider my solid-green spider plants to be a living memory. The friend from Starbucks who gave the original plant to me and I no longer speak. It wasn’t for any bad reasons, sometimes you just don’t keep up with work friends. But I love having the reminder of his friendship sitting on my kitchen counter, on my bookshelf, and hanging from a macrame hanger.
My Starbucks friend, Caleb (not his real name), and I weren’t even that close, really. If we were lucky, we worked together maybe twice a week. But at the time, I was feeling like my career choices were really starting to weigh me down. Working part time at Starbucks and part time at the Denver Zoo was a massive energy drain, as much as I enjoyed both places.
Caleb saw potential in me and encouraged me to apply for shift supervisor, helping me see that life is long, there will be lots of career inflection points, and life is also too short to be married to one career path.
Caleb was an elder queer, willing to share his stories along his journey to self-love and acceptance and giving me space to explore mine in turn.
Caleb was funny, smart, and wickedly efficient, driving me to ask myself constantly how I am using this one precious and wild life, and also not taking it all too seriously.
It’s funny how these things go sometimes. Caleb and I worked together for maybe 5 or 6 months, and haven’t spoken since I stopped working at Starbucks. There’s truly no love lost there—this is just how friendship is sometimes. But still, I find it remarkable that his simple gift of a spider plant has had such a lasting effect on me.
Every time I tend to my spider plants, I think of him and wish him well, wherever he is.
I am grateful that my friendship with him is not the only one I have forged through plant exchanges. I am grateful for the living, interactive memory that my plants provide. I am grateful for how they remind me of my friendships, some long-lived, some blooming brightly and then fading. All of them worth my time, effort, and attention.
I don’t think there’s much more to life’s purpose than to give and receive love to one another. I love my spider plants because they embody moments of love given, received, and nurtured.