She meant to help me be a kind person. As a child I went to Unitarian Sunday school. Later I attended worship at many churches and temples and houses of worship. Though not religious, I wanted to be a good person. I wanted a clean conscience and self respect. I think that’s what my mother hoped for. Mom meant for me to consider the struggles, trials, and pain of other people and how that influences their actions toward me. She did not mean that I should consider myself last, but thinking how others feel has helped me consider motivations and sometimes allowed me to be kinder to myself. It certainly has forced me, sometimes, to behave better.

I thought I was done posting. I hid my posts in April, then opened them again a month later. And now I try to post. Gary says it’s good that I post. This past week has been especially…. hard? painful? heartbreaking? Is there a word strong enough to explain? Lately, as I walk Portland streets and see someone smoking, I have said out loud: You have known your whole life that cigarettes are poison. These are times when saying anything to a stranger might result in being shot in the face. Safer to post here.

Throughout my life, I have been prone to periods of profound sadness. This is one of those times. I think it is a rational response to the situations just now. 

The greatest advantage to living long is knowing things will be better, that I will feel better after a while. I know this, though I do not feel it. I know it’s true.

I will feel better. Maybe nothing will improve, but I will manage.

There are people in the world who built a cellphone large enough for a horse. They taught horses to use it to text messages. (There’s a video showing all this on the website.) The horses might not see the point, but horses play. I suspect most animals have a sense of humor.

We did not walk to the Portland Rose Garden today, as we often do, but I saw a huge cascading rose outside a flower shop. Flushed with tiny white single blossoms, it grew twelve or more feet up and arched over the door of the shop and the sidewalk. The owner of the shop had no idea what variety it was. “It’s a volunteer that’s come up through a crack in the pavement.” She says it sets hips, tiny and red. I will return to collect seeds.

Below, a poem.

BOTANY LAB
by Jan Priddy

A generation ago in my Botany lab,
my partner bends over specimens, scalpel
poised like a paintbrush. He slices flowers
perfectly in half; my turn to peer
through the microscope. I count stamens
and ova. As I draw diagrams, search
for proper names in the text,
I do not notice silence

until it’s broken. Someone,
also hunched over high black counters
and flower parts, asks the air, What sets
human beings apart from the lower animals?
Tools comes an answer from across 
the room. Aren’t we the only species
which makes and uses tools? We decide
not, since Goodall documented chimpanzees 
fishing for termites. Playing, I hear my partner 
assert. Man is the only animal that plays. 

I look up from the sexual organs of plants
and smile. I think he’s wrong, though I am
not the first to say it. My dog plays with me,
says another Botany student. But my partner
argues with pets. They are domestic animals,
tainted by association. Fawns, we offer,
adolescent lions. Juveniles, he shakes his head.
Adult otters swim purely for fun, we counter.
Porpoises leap in the wakes of ships, squirrels
play tag in trees, foxes pounce on dandelions.
His forehead puckers, scalpel painting the air.
Really? 

Under my microscope, a five part flower,
many stamens, fleshy calyx-tube.
Family Rosaceae,
genus Rosa,
species multiflora,
precisely like
the illustration in my text—
a local flower I see each day.

“Botany Lab” was first published in StringTown, 2001