Grown

The first house I moved to in California came with this scraggly little nothing of a plant in a pot too big for itself. My family adopted it, bringing it out of the empty and moth-occupied courtyard and into the company of other plants. The plant found its way into our second California home, and through the drought and then the unusually heavy rainfall of this year, the plant grew into its pot, and even out of it, curling over the sides and upwards. It has been four years since I first moved to California, and at 17, I am grown. At 13, I came to California from New York with hair so long it swallowed me and at 17, I leave California for New York with hair just as long as the hair I left with. I’ve been trying to reconcile the fact that I’m leaving my childhood in a seeming spring for adulthood with my bicoastal confusion. I grew up saying bubble tea on the east and exchanged it for boba on the west. When I come home for Christmas, I’ll be leaving behind the North Pole and the city slush for sandals and at most, cardigans. I am grown; at the point where it is not so much about growing into myself as just growing. We talk about this a little while I’m photographing the florists at Studio La Fleur. College, kids, growing up. But mostly, I’m just watching their steady hands and focused eyes, realizing these florists are seeing, looking for something I can’t see, like a color that my eyes can’t detect.