You cannot force someone to comprehend a message they are not ready to receive. Still, you must never underestimate the power of planting a seed. – unknown.

I’ve always liked Coonties.
They are hardy. They are green all year.
Once established, they don’t take much care.

Still, they have to be properly introduced to the soil conditions at this unique place.

When I got my first coonties, I dug a hole for each of them, just a bit wider and deeper than their little root balls.
I put water and fertilizer in the hole and placed them in it.
Soil filled the gap between the roots and the sides of the hole. The good stuff.
It was meant to give them the best possible chance at a full life.

God speed, my Coonties, you’re on your own, I told them.
I don’t irrigate.
God will give you water when She’s ready, I told them.
But, sometimes, She’ll withhold.
Occasionally I relent and drag the hose to where it’s needed.

The first time I met my nephew, he was two years old.
He was “growing like a weed,” his parents told me.
We were on a beach in the Sarasota sun.

There were no weeds in the moment captured in a picture I still have.
With me on my knees and my nephew leaning in,
His eyes closed, mine covered by sunglasses,
Both of us puckered as if to kiss.

Coonties are slow-growing.
In the ground for two years, they survived.
Drought and cold tolerant.
They were green and lush and leafy.
A stash of native Florida by the walkway to the front door.
Welcome to our home, they said.

My nephew’s home split when he was a tween.
His dad took custody of him, his mom took his little brother.
He was moved from Sarasota to a place where he could still fish.
He loved to fish. Still does.

His dad would sometimes leave him alone,
As he departed to a girlfriend’s house or elsewhere.
My nephew grew, on his own, too much for a tween becoming a teen.
He grew like an epiphyte, taking nutrients from the air, from wherever he could.

In a freezer, he found his dad’s stash.
He was not yet 13.
And, just like that, like father like son.
Cigarettes and weed didn’t replace the fishing,
They enhanced it.

To replace the walkway, we had to displace the Coonties.
I dug them up and put them into big containers.
They were relocated to the back of the house,
Where the sun was different.

The first changes were gradual; you could hardly see it.
Steadily, there were fewer leaves, and the plants grew thinner.
Some were turning yellow.
What was slow growth became no growth.

The Coonties were stunted.
I couldn’t tell if they would make it or not.

My nephew became uncontrollable.
He was caught with drugs.
He ran wild.
His father placed him in a private military-type school.
A cracker kid with no self-discipline. A teenager.
There was no fishing. It didn’t last long.

Back he went to the place where he could fish.
And had access to drugs.
It didn’t take long.
A judge sent him to a program in North Florida.
A place where they send boys in trouble.

The Coonties struggled.
Maybe they didn’t like the planters.
Maybe the sun was wrong.
Something was definitely wrong.
I didn’t take the time to figure it out.

They were supposed to be hardy.
They should have been fine on their own.
The Coonties weren’t supposed to need me.

But my mom did. She came to live with us.
For a while, she did well, and then she didn’t.
My nephew was nearly 20 when his grandmother died.
She loved him unconditionally. He knew it.

He came to our home, a petite girlfriend in tow,
To see if my Mother’s designer clothes would fit her.
As she slipped into one jacket, my nephew said, “You don’t look good in that. Don’t take it.”
“But I like it,” she protested.
My husband and I watched listened.
“Leave it.”

Command. Control. Bully.
Like father, like son.

Summers came and passed, and I didn’t hear from my nephew.
When he called, he wanted a place to stay just a couple days,
To look for work.
He was in his mid-20’s.
He had a different girlfriend. He’d lost his job, detailing cars.
He wanted to leave Ocala and move back to Sarasota.
He wanted more money. He wanted his own detailing business.
He was clean, too. No drugs, he said.

Though they were supposed to flourish in any kind of sun,
The Coonties seemed to thrive when I moved them to a place,
Where there was sun and shade at different times of the day.
They are supposed to be hardy, needing no tending,
Still, the Coonties perked up with some attention in the way of fertilizer and water.
Their leaves got thicker, and there were more of them.
After a little care and several years, the Coonties were coming back.

“Do you want to live in Grandma’s house?” I asked my nephew.
I owned the house in Sarasota. I used it as a rental property.
But it was empty.
“Yes.”
My husband and I agreed that Mom would have been happy for me to help him.
We gave him a trailer and water tank to start detailing cars.
We gave him a place to live rent-free while he started over.
With a girlfriend and a baby girl.
He was transplanted. He was transformed.

I hoped so, anyway.

We built a carport and a big circular driveway with a massive planting area.
The landscaper did some of the work, but the area was so big, it needed something else.
It needed my Coonties.
One by one, I loaded them into a wheelbarrow and moved them from the back to the front of the house.
They didn’t look great.
Better, but not best.
If they were ever going to be lush again, they needed to be removed from the planters and placed in the ground, yet again.
Transplanted.

I dug the holes, a little bit wider, and a bit deeper than the root balls.
I put water in the holes along with a little fertilizer.
I placed them in the hole spreading the dirt on the surface.

Time, I thought. The Coonties just need some time.
Summers came and went.
The Coonties began to bear fruit.
It made me wonder about them. For so long stunted,
Then transformed in the right place and the right time.

Indians used the Coontie fruit as food in a variety of ways.
As a paste with honey making something like gruel, and as flour for a hard flatbread.
The thing about eating Coontie fruit is that it cannot be allowed to ferment,
Or it becomes a kind of cyanide.
It’s a plant that can sustain or take life.

My nephew’s mom bought him a fancy truck for his detailing business.
I had a logo made for him.
He fought with his baby-mama. She cried to me.
“Don’t call her filthy names in front of your baby girl,” I cautioned him,
“She’ll think that is how men treat women.”
He knew it was wrong, but he had such a temper.
Like father, like son.

Eventually, they split. My nephew and the baby-mama shared custody of their little girl.
When his little girl was with him, he took her to the woods.
He took her to the beach.
He took her fishing.
The drinking came and went. The drugs came and went.
Sometimes the work came and went, but he always loved his daughter.

When the Coonties were gestating, their leaves sagged.
The pollen and seed cones swelled, seeming to suck the life from the leaves.
After pollination, the leaves push out, reaching toward the sun.

His business was doing well.
He was seeing his daughter regularly.
He got some chickens.
The fish were biting.
Then something went terribly wrong.

My nephew didn’t talk to his dad, my brother, most of the time.
But he asked me about my Mother.
“She had secrets,” he said. His father told him so.
“We all have secrets,” I told him. “You have to get over what’s been done to you.”
Make choices that make you the person you want to be, I told him.
You don’t have to be like your father.

He’s 35 years old this year.
When he called, he said he wanted to see me.
He needed my help.
He said that he’d talked to the FBI, that he was aware of public corruption.
He wanted to blow the roof off a conspiracy.
“Have you been drinking?” I asked.
“I haven’t had a drink since I was shot in the stomach.”
“You were shot?”
He was laughing when he said, “I’m fine now.”
He wanted to come to visit. A short trip from Sarasota to Tampa.
“Let’s meet at the casino, instead,” I suggested. “Saturday, around 2 pm.”

He told me he hadn’t seen his daughter in nine months.
“But she loves you, I can’t believe they can keep her from you.”
“My mom is lying to her about me.”
Which was just another clue.
For the first time in five years, I spoke to his Mother.

My nephew had been arrested. Burglary, assault.
He’s abusing Adderall. When he can’t get that, he uses crystal meth.
They act on the brain in the same way.
In the last eight months, he’s been arrested three times.
He was involuntarily hospitalized (in Florida, it’s called the Baker Act). It is used as a verb.
Baker Acted. Twice. By his Mother.
He called me when he got out the second time.

Two of the Coonties were doing great. One was yellow and a bit scraggly, even after pollination.
I attributed it to the confederate jasmine groundcover, which had spread around and into the plant.
It was being strangled. It had been for some time.
I just let it go. I had other things to do.
It didn’t seem urgent.

That Saturday morning, I decided to trim the Coonties.
First, I removed the low hanging and yellow branches.
Then, I started in on the offending jasmine.

I listen to a book as I work in the yard.
My phone rang.
It was 10:30 am. It was my nephew.

I took off my gloves and answered the phone.
“Hey, guy.”
“What ‘u doin’?”
“Trimming my Coonties.”
“Sounds like fun.”
“Are you OK?”
(Laughing) “Sure, why do you ask?”
“I was concerned about the texts last night. You seemed…frenetic.”
“Not upbeat and happy?”
“No.”
“I’ll come up to see you tomorrow.”
“We had a plan to meet today at the casino,” I said.
“Sure, just send me some gas money.”
Me: silent. His mom said gas money becomes drug money.
“I’ll meet you at 400 and Madison, and you can just hand over the money.”
“What’s 400 and Madison?”
In a tone I have heard before, dripping sarcasm, “It’s the BBC Bank in downtown Tampa, Aunt Honey.”
He sounded exactly like his father.

“We can meet you today at the casino,” I said. “Tomorrow, we have plans.”
“Right.”

I spent two-and-a-half hours tending my Coonties.
Then I went into the house, found the picture from the beach, me squatting, him leaning in for a kiss, both of us puckered.
I texted it to him.
A memory. A hope. A seed.

– Honey Rand