When we got engaged, my friends sent us an abundance tree.
I love houseplants—all 50 of them—and the idea was as our love grew, so would this new little greenery.
It first lived by the patio door in the bedroom of our sun-filled Boston apartment. It thrived—and I made sure to pull the curtains each morning to give it light. Then, it made the East Coast relocation trip in the trunk of our Jeep—somehow surviving three whole days in a car.
Then, it sat next to our bed in our apartment in Asheville. Though it had much less sunlight, it continued to sprout. Finally, it found a more permanent home when we found ours.
I was six months pregnant when we moved into our house, and when my friend asked where it should go, I said, “Our bedroom!” After all, that’s where it’s always lived.
The light here is different—one side of the house has morning rays, while the other receives a sliver of afternoon sunshine. Though our abundance tree was sandwiched between four windows in a corner… it wasn’t happy. The leaves started to turn brown and yellow, eventually creating a mess on our carpet.
A few weeks before our daughter, Josefine was born, I moved it away from the window—thinking maybe there was a draft or something was off. Then when she was a few weeks old, Ras asked me: “Our abundance tree isn’t looking so good. Maybe it needs to go somewhere else?”
He didn’t mean anything by this comment—he was just trying to help—but I snapped back at him. For whatever reason, I felt like my houseplant mothering skills were being criticized. As a new (stressed out) mom to a human, my only response was passive-aggressive: “I don’t have energy to think about a plant when I’m worrying about a baby. It’ll be fine.”
The next morning—(or was it afternoon? Time is obsolete with an infant)—I walked downstairs and noticed our abundance tree sitting next to our dining room table. The dead leaves had been removed, the branches trimmed. The pot was clean, and the soil was new and damp.
“I moved it here to see if it will do better. I Googled, and we may need to cut the stem a little bit. I’m going to wait and see how it does. Don’t worry about it. I will take care of it! ” he told me later that evening.
My pride was still sunburned and sensitive to the touch: I had always been the keeper of the greenery in our home, and now here he was, rescuing the abundance tree.
“You didn’t have to do that,” I said sheepishly, hearing the silent siren of phantom cries from our sleeping baby.
“It’s our abundance tree; of course I did. I know how much it means to you and to us. And it doesn’t have to be in our bedroom—we own the whole house, you know,” he said, pulling me in for a hug. I softened in his arms, feeling my ego melt away. Only loud enough for him to hear, I whispered, “Thank you.”
Our abundance tree now lives in the kitchen. It’s growing new leaves; it’s happy. He takes care of it for us.
It serves as a daily reminder of the abundance I have because I married this man. To be exact, I married him under an umbrella in the pouring rain of a southern summer rainstorm exactly three years ago today. I’m still in awe of everything that has unfolded since I met him and how quickly life has been turned upside down and right-side up, somehow landing in one of the most beautiful yet simplest stages of my life.
The days are long; the weeks are short. The year flew by—and pregnancy drug on. We aren’t jet setting every month or splitting a dozen oysters on a random Tuesday anymore. Our house is never tidy, and our to-do list is always left open-ended. We’re really tired most of the time—but we find something to laugh and smile about daily.
Our life is abundant—there is extraordinary found in the ordinary.
I prefer to do the mornings with Josefine, and when she was little, I carried her around as I turn on the espresso machine, pull her bottle out of the fridge, and let our dog, Charli outside.
While I waited for my cup and she’s was waking up, I walked by the abundance tree. I showed her the leaves and let her kick them with her tiny feet.
And then I told her about how her father rescued it.
And how many times, even though I don’t need rescuing, he does little things to bring joy to my life. To our life. Gestures to make things easier for me. And for us. Subtle reassurances that I’m not in this alone anymore, that we’re a team, that we’ve got this.
Sweet sentiments—sent via text, whispered over a sleeping baby or in a middle-of-the-day grin—make me continuously grateful for this person I decided to share my life with.
He’s my true partner and my closest confidant, the father of the most beautiful being I’ve ever met, and the keeper of my heart. Even with nature’s and life’s inevitable seasons, his love is steady, sure and certain.
We take turns giving more than 50 percent; we pick up one another’s short ends. Trim one another’s frayed leaves when they need it. Give water and light to one another.
He’s patient, and I’m kind, and together, like the stems of our abundance tree, we intertwine to help one another bloom.
It’s been years since my husband moved our abundance tree—and so much has changed. Our daughter is now a wild, amazing toddler—and I’m in my second trimester with our second child, another daughter.
The tree continues to be the first thing I see each morning when I wake up. He continues to take care of it.
And ya know what? Just like us, our marriage and our family, it just continues to grow and grow and grow.
