

My father brings home a fern


Sometime in the early 1990s, my father found a fern on a New York City sidewalk and brought it home. If you’d asked him why, he would have said something like, It was a perfectly good fern! I don’t know why anyone would throw it out! This was basically his answer for why he picked up anything from the street.

The fern would likely have gone unnoticed in the apartment, which was filled with plants of every kind, a few that may also have met untimely deaths were it not for the heroic rescue of my father. But it was ultimately decided (maybe it was my stepmother’s idea, as he claims) that the best place for the fern was in the shower. What I mean is that the fern was hung from the ceiling in the shower. The steam was apparently perfect for it. And that was very likely true. The fern flourished in the shower. It was gorgeous and lush and huge. The only problem was that it was in the shower.

I need to explain this shower for a second. This particular shower on west 73rd Street in Manhattan was miserable. It was famous for this. Whenever a friend stayed over, I would always say, This shower is going to be the worst shower you ever take in your life. And it always was. The apartment was on the tenth floor and it seemed to be an exhausting struggle for the water to make it up that high. At best, the shower was extremely weak. At worst, it would turn off altogether right in the middle with no warning. Or it would suddenly become a thin stream of entirely hot water, which would be most infuriating of all. (It reminds me of that old Catskills joke: The food here is terrible…and such small portions too.)

In any case, while the shower was just perfect for a fern, it was never particularly good for people. Thus adding a fern to the mix was kind of a tipping point for most people involved with this shower. You’d be trying to wash your hair (quickly now, before the water shut off!) and your arms would bang into the fern. More often than not, taller people would find bits of fern in their hair when they stepped out of the shower. If the water suddenly became hot you’d be forced to leap back into the fern, which blocked your way from the rear part of the tub anyway.

What I am trying to say here is that a situation that was at best miserable was for some reason made a tiny bit worse. And yet for some other reason that fern stayed in the shower. I wasn’t living with my father anymore at this point, but I did come to the apartment often. Do you really think the fern needs to be in the shower? I would ask. My father would say, But look at it! Look how great it’s doing! Plants ruled that house. The humans made that clear.

My father would later tell show me an article about toxoplasmosis and how this parasite that lived in cats caused humans to go insane. People get the parasite in them, he insisted, and then they are compelled to keep getting cats! Their lives are just completely devoted to the cats! That’s fascinating, I said.

And the fern? I had forgotten all about it when a few years ago my father and stepmother moved to a new apartment, one with a pretty decent shower. One day I reminded them of the fern, chuckling with the crazy idea that we had once had a fern in the shower. But the fern did so well! exclaimed my stepmother. And look at it now!

Now? There were two bathrooms in the apartment, but the second wasn’t used much. Except that pulling aside the shower curtain in there, I discovered the fern: huge, green, and lush as always, in a room of its own now, triumphant.

Categories: General
Reyna Eisenstark

One Response

  1. redwinemom says:

    Great memory. And so funny! Thanks for sharing. ;)