Chamaedorea cataractarum, the cat palm, cascade palm, or cataract palm, is a small palm tree. It is native to Southern Mexico and Central America.
A boy I used to love owned a cat-palm. It wasn’t very big or very beautiful, but it was very his. He would water it twice a week, dutifully reading directions on wiki-how to keep the plant alive. For an arborist, he knew surprisingly little about the care and keeping of this low-maintenance semi-tree. The plant’s leaves would weep and sag, easily unsatisfied. So it moved in migrant patterns around his childhood home, growing roots in every corner until it finally settled into the mossy carpet of the master bedroom. I would wake up to the feeling of dancing hands on my hips and palm leaves on my nose.
We bought the plant together, at Home Depot, on our third date. He walked barefoot through the greenhouse aisles, pressing his toes into the pavement, searching for the right roots. I knew I loved him from the way he took his steps, careful and considerate and confident. His thin frame leaned over each plant as he read their plaque card descriptions. He knew he loved the cat palm from the way it reached its soiled hands to hold his. This is the one. He placed a large pot for $4.99 in the space between my arms and body, trusting me with the weight. The plant looked up at us expectantly, knowing it was coming home.
We carefully strapped the cat palm into the left back car seat. It wailed as we blew through the Central Oregon traffic, distraught by motion and the little bits of soil that would fall out of the pot when I made a left turn.
“Almost there,” I said, squeezing the little palm’s leaves, “hold on for one more minute.” We settled into a routine. Wake up with the sunrise, feel the warmth of the day photosynthesizing through us. He worked and I wandered, taking the palm through town with me. The little plant and I found new ways of feeling alive – sipping coffees by the river, reading our books on mountain tops. Hank would come home and we would dance in the refrigerator light to Ween or Fiona Apple. The palm would sway in motion alongside us. Once, we accidentally kicked over the plant’s pot. The fronds splayed over the carpet, encircled by spilled soil.
“Quick, grab the loam,” Hank said.
I nodded and grabbed the bag of soil from his kitchen closet. Together, we pat new soil into the pot and interwove the roots again, standing the little plant upright again. I traced a frond with my index finger.
Shhhhh, I whispered.
Then Hank held my cheekbones with his ten fingers until we collapsed with laughter and made love until we could do it all over again.
He knew how to do things that other people didn’t, like kayaking off of sixty foot waterfalls or climbing until he could tip toe around God. He taught me the bits and pieces. How to roll myself over in his kayak, how to tie safe climbing knots. How to pivot my hips towards a rockwall in order to reach for a hold. We drove to Squamish, in British Columbia, where he taught me to walk without my shoes.
We knew it wouldn’t last – I was 19 and he 24, cat palms from Home Depot aren’t meant to live forever. I had school across the country to return to in September. He would never graduate college, never be anything more than an arborist, never leave Bend. What would my mother think? There was only so much of him I could hold. The two months we had slipped beneath me, like eroded soil from a monsoon rain storm. Our days were numbered, and soon they were over.
The last time I saw him or the palm it was an unseasonably cold day in late August. Hank, barefoot as always, held me until my soil spilled over my pot, and it was time for me and my Subaru to make the twelve hour drive home to Salt Lake City. I waved goodbye through my window, leaving my love growing companions behind.