Reflections from the Managing Editor

Reflections from the Managing Editor: Together Again, Soon

By Jordan LaHaye Fontenot

My grandma has the most fantastic pothos I’ve ever seen. It sits in the middle of a round dinner table, which hasn’t been used for dinner in ages. For years, this table’s purpose has been simply to hold this remarkable specimen of devil’s ivy. Pouring from its pot, the vines— dozens of them—must stretch at least as long as I am tall. My grandmother, Cherie, arranges them in a circle, wrapping around and around that pot in a massive, mesmerizing swirl of greenery. Tis vine has propagated half a dozen other plants that live on her back patio, plus many more she’s planted in the dirt, trailing along the path to her front door.

Writing this in mid-February, at the end of a week many have dubbed “the snowpocalypse of the South,” I’ve been thinking about my grandparents, who live outside of Houston in Katy. Theirs was one of the four million homes that lost power and water as a result of the storm. Thankfully, their two outages never lasted more than twenty-four

hours; but on that Monday night they spent in the cold, I struggled to fall asleep in my own heated house, two hundred and forty iced-over miles away. My aunt, who lives just down the road from them, couldn’t even reach them for the first two days.

It’s a relatively new dilemma, this inability to be physically present for the ones you love, especially when they are in need. And yet, it seems to have become quite the theme in this season of disasters.

Which is why when Publisher James Fox-Smith finally received a visa waiver from the Australian Government Department of Home Affairs, he wasted no time in packing his bags, saying his goodbyes, and prepping for a ten thousand mile flight homeward. On press day morning—at the hour at which he has turned in his “Reflections” column for the last twenty-five-plus years—he’ll instead be soaring somewhere over the South Pacific. Our fearless leader will be spending the next several weeks visiting his parents after over a year apart, a year of plague and isolation and wildfires and more.

By the time you read this, he’ll most likely still be quarantining in a hotel room in Sydney, tuning into our weekly Zoom meetings in the middle of the Australian night (“Might as well stay on American time in isolation, right?”).

As we round the corner on a full year since we first heard the phrase “social distancing,” the strain of isolation has certainly been stretched taut. It’s been hard, these six feet and more. The stakes for togetherness have been raised. Suddenly, to drop everything, fly ten thousand miles, sit in a hotel room alone

for two weeks—all to see the ones you love when they need you—well, it feels perfectly logical. Togetherness, we know now more than ever, is worth some sacrifice, and it is not to be taken for granted.

So, we’ll sit out another festival season. Another St. Patrick’s Day. Because, finally, we can see light at the end of this tunnel. We are so close. Things are heating up. The ice is melting.

I’ve never been very good at gardening. But I’ve got a pothos, too. I’ve had it for about two years, now—the only one of my house plants to have enjoyed such a lifespan. I keep it on top of my china cabinet, where Grandma Cherie’s century-old set—my wedding gift, since she couldn’t be there—lives. The longest vine drags on the floor, and I think of her every time I water it. When my other houseplants inevitably shrivel up, I replace them with cuttings from my one successful specimen.

It occurs to me that the vines Grandma planted in the dirt may not have survived the freeze. Soon, I think I’ll make the drive to Katy. And together, we can cut from what’s grown in this isolation, and generate something altogether new.