By Crystal Rowe
@everythingissacred

“We have presents for you!” my friend Kelli squeals as we wrap our arms around each other in a warm hug. It’s Christmas Eve morning and our families haven’t seen each other in four months. We are used to weekly dinners and shared holidays—neither of us have extended family in New England. COVID-19 cases are on the rise again, but an outdoor hike seems relatively risk-free, so we put on our long underwear, snow pants, and boots and meet for a walk in the woods. 

She carefully hands me a vintage glass creamer jar full of dirt. “It’s a grapefruit plant!” she gushes. “It grows really slow.” Promising me there is a seed inside, she assures me if I keep it watered, it will grow. I have no idea if grapefruits can actually grow in New England. We don’t exactly have tropical weather. 

Under ideal conditions, grapefruit plants bear fruit after three years. Plants produce the sweetest fruits in tropical climates: hot days and warm nights. This is why Florida grapefruits are sweeter than ones grown in California. Grapefruit plants don’t thrive in cold weather. They tolerate cold, but they won’t grow or produce much without heat, and a hard freeze is a sure way to kill them.

What’s more, grapefruit plants need to be repotted once a year in a goldilocks pot—one that’s not too big and not too small. The roots need room to grow, but having too much space can cause a shock. Honestly, I don’t have much hope that this grapefruit plant will bear edible fruit—its growing conditions are less than ideal—but I will tend to it anyway. 

I can identify with my little grapefruit plant. I, too, prefer hot days and warm nights. When we first moved to Boston from Atlanta, I loathed snow. I would much rather sit in a pool in April than hike in the snow in December. 

And yet. 

Six years ago, my husband, David, got a job offer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He had never lived anywhere other than metro-Atlanta and longed to experience life somewhere else. I lived in the midwest during college and law school and had no desire to live anywhere but the South. Georgia was my home. My family was there. I loved my beautiful little bungalow across the street from my favorite park in downtown Atlanta. We were living my dream.

But I wanted to support his dreams too, and the offer was too good an opportunity to pass up. So we packed all our possessions, loaded our two girls—who were three and 18 months old—and moved more than a thousand miles away from everything we knew. We left family, lifelong friends, beloved church communities, and our dream neighborhood. We moved to a place where we knew not a soul. 

And we did it in the middle of winter.

***

One cold and dreary day in January 2016, David and I are sitting on an empty pew just outside the fellowship hall at a church we have been attending since Christmas Eve. Our girls are in Sunday School, David is scrolling on his phone, and I am reading The Lutheran. I often read this magazine at my church in Atlanta, so I eagerly pick it up from the rack when we walk in the door. Its familiarity calms my lonely heart. I hear “Hi, I’m David,” and look up to see a petite woman sitting next to him. He does this all the time—introduces himself to strangers—and I think to myself, how very Southern of him. 

The woman politely says hi and turns back to her phone, slouching a bit on the pew. We haven’t had much luck meeting people since we moved to Boston six weeks ago. I don’t believe it’s because people are rude; I think they mind their own business. Before we moved here, a friend warned me that it’s hard to make friends in New England, but if you manage to get past people’s initial walls, friendships will grow. And you’ll develop the most loyal friends you’ve ever had.

David, relentless, asks the woman questions about how long she’s lived here and where she’s from. He informs her we moved to Massachusetts from Atlanta. She introduces herself as Kelli and says she and her husband both went to a small college in Brookhaven, a town just north of the city. This really gets my attention. “Oglethorpe?” I ask.

She looks at me and replies with a smile: “Yes.” I tell her I know people who graduated from Oglethorpe in ‘99 or 2000. She straightens her posture a bit, leans into the conversation, and says she wasn’t there yet. I wager she’s a few years younger than me. I vaguely remember seeing her on Christmas Eve, with a very tall man and two children close in age to my own. 

“It can be a hard transition to move here from the South,” she says, “it took me years before seeing the Atlanta skyline didn’t make me teary-eyed.” I nod, wondering if I will ever be able to fly to Georgia without crying. Just then, a rush of kids runs down the hall, and I excuse myself to get our girls. I feel slightly hopeful; maybe I will make friends here after all.

During worship, Kelli walks past me down the aisle for communion and I feel something drop in my hand. Curious, I open it to find a note with her name and phone number. Sliding it in my pocket, I feel like I am in middle school all over again and the coolest kid in class has taken time to say hi, later dropping a note in my locker. 

I am the luckiest girl in the world.

The next day, I can’t find that little slip of paper anywhere. Grabbing purses that haven’t been used since unpacked, I dump their contents on my bed in a frenzy. David, hearing the racket from the living room of our tiny rental apartment, rushes in to see why I am destroying every bag I own.

“I can’t find it!” I yell at him. I collapse onto the bed and bang my hands against the mattress in fury. “I finally have a chance to make a friend here, and I lost her number! I hate it here! I want to move back home!”

After composing myself, I go to Facebook to find my lost hope. I search through posts on the church page, looking for any names or pictures to ring a bell. I find her, send a friend request along with a private message, and say a prayer that she really is as nice as she seems and won’t think I am a crazy stalker. She replies almost immediately, and asks if I’d like to have lunch sometime next week.

Sending that Facebook message is quite possibly the scariest thing I have done since giving birth to my oldest child. But really, what do I have to lose? It’s not like anyone in Massachusetts knows me anyway. If she thinks I am crazy, well, I don’t want to be her friend in the first place. 

But deep down, I really do.

***

I can see the roots of my grapefruit plant weeks before a small sprout emerges from the lifeless dirt. My 6-year-old notices it first, just a few weeks after our Christmas Eve hike: “Look, Mama! The grapefruit plant is growing!” We celebrate, believing now we see it growing above the dirt, it will be a big plant before we know it.

Weeks go by. Every day we test the dirt, watering it when it feels dry; trying to have faith that the plant is growing. And then one day, when we least expect it, we see two tiny leaves starting to form—proof that the roots continue to grow, that our nurturing is working. Though it may be slow, it is becoming stronger than before. By March, there are little white roots everywhere, cramped together like toothpicks in a newly opened box. One afternoon, David and the girls move it to a beautiful milk glass pot I found at a thrift store years ago; Kelli loves milk glass, so it feels like the right next pot for this gift from her. 

Today, my baby grapefruit sits on my kitchen windowsill. Its six waxy leaves smile at me in the late afternoon sun, reminding me that sometimes growth is slower than we’d like. It’s still not warm enough for me to put the plant outside, but I have hope that it, like my friendship with Kelli, will become something beautiful in time. I knew that moving it to a bigger pot was a risk, but if I didn’t take that risk, it wouldn’t thrive at all. Sometimes we have to take risks to allow our roots to grow a little deeper.

Guest essay written by Crystal Rowe. Crystal is a native southerner living in the North Shore region of Massachusetts. After a brief career as a real estate attorney, she now spends her time at home, homeschooling her two daughters. With whatever (limited) free time she can find, you can find her cooking wholesome food for family and friends, working on her writing craft, and reading lots of books. You can find more of her writing on her blog or on Instagram.