Understanding Home Through Thigmotropism

This piece is part of the 4th Symposium (theme: Home) of the Soaring Twenties Social Club, “the home of the 2020’s artistic renaissance,” founded by Thomas J Bevan.

---

From just-begun to the age of 18, we moved 12 times. Mostly between a few proximal towns. Among my mom’s many marriages and breakups, we made homes filled with books and plants. 

Our interiors were unfettered by the rules of design. In a kitchen with not enough cupboard space, we had an antique bedroom dresser with a cataract mirror. Shoeboxes in the drawers became separators for silverware. The cupboards we did have were decorated with photos of Sean Connery and Clint Eastwood that my mom tore from magazines. 

Before Jim, my house was covered in needy English ivy. It clung to the house with the tenacity of infatuation. It even spread across the windows. 

The space between me and Nature flattened as there was an entire ecosystem at play between the leaves and screen. Moths, sparrows, caterpillars, and cicadas - all was a writhe of activity. Even Japanese beetles, with their destructive devouring and unsatiated sex drives, added iridescence to the dance. 

My brick and stucco structure gave support to a vine whose only other choice was to remain prostrate. Plants are smart, they seek support. If my house didn’t stand, the ivy would have climbed the ash tree instead.

Jim commented last night on the lean of our newly sprouted avocado towards the light - this is phototropism. 

Whereas twining vines lean towards touch - this is thigmotropism.

One morning he hollered down from the bathroom, “the fern has a new sprout!” These fresh fronds, in their unfurled state, resemble gnarled knuckles, so he named the Blue Star Fern “Knuckly.”

A month ago, as we used the a/c to mollify the heat wave, Jim proposed closing the vent in the bathroom to protect the 15 humid-adoring plants living there from the windy chill.

Three nights ago, after several days of watching me roll the 6-foot canna into the bathroom at 7:30 to bask in the morning sun, he moved her in there at night so she could wake with the rays already penetrating her pores. 

Noticing Jim notice the plants reminded me of the ivy, and how since he arrived my spiraling has changed direction.

From twining to entwined.

I extend any aerial limb to his touch, whether my neck to his lips, my ass to his slap, or my back to his passing caress. 

I used to be a vine twining across a barren sea of sand, devoid even of boats built from the bones of past loves. Not that their skeletal masts would have been able to handle the wrap of my muscled tongue anyway. 

Now we twist and curl each other, our morphologies transformed into a column of coils. Is he the touch and I the vine or the other way around?

It is both.

Sometimes I am mortar while he is adherence.

Sometimes he is brick while I am cling. 

Either way, together our morning-glory bodies have built a home.