Father's cattleya

It's the Spring of 1992, I was driving home from Stanford after a hectic day in the office, still tired from the jet lag from Taiwan where my mind was on, feeling that I needed something beautiful to lift me up, something that would remind me, year after year, of the reason why I took this emergency trip home.

Recalling a colleague talking about her botanical tour of a nursery with acres of orchids in South San Francisco, I made a detour off highway 280 onto El Camino Real, drove into the parking lot of Rod McClellan Co., Acres of Orchids, an orchid paradise and a Bay Area institution for a century until it closed in 1998 to make way for for high density housing development.

There were hundreds of beautiful orchids in the nursery, but my eyes were drawn to a display of showy, golden yellow cattleya. This was the one that I wanted to take home, I knew it when I saw it.

"Aren't they beautiful? They are from Raymond Burr's Sea God Nurseries." said a friendly female voice. I knew Raymond Burr was the actor in that popular, long running Emmy-winning American TV series, Perry Mason. It would be nice to have an orchid from his nursery.

But the cost for a full-grown, blooming plant was so high that I couldn't really afford it then in 1992. Disappointed, I was ready to leave but the lady took me to a table on which sat a dozen of orchid seedlings. They were the seedlings of those expensive ones that had caught my eyes, for thirty dollars I could have one and a hope that it would grow into an adult plant.

I decided to buy an inexpensive blooming dendrobium with purple flowers and a seedling of the beautiful cattleya, thought that I would cultivate the seedling for the rewards later. How naive I was! What if it didn't survive?

I put it on the kitchen windowsill where it's kissed by the gentle morning sun. I watered and fertilized it according to the care instructions, watched it grew into an adult plant, delighted by the beautiful flower on a single spike for a few years, divided them into two and into four as they out grew their pots. In the early Fall of 2002, all four plants bore such a beautiful flowers that brightened my house for a long time.

After that, they stopped flowering until late this Summer, one of them surprised me with the same brilliant golden yellow flower that made my heart leap in joy again.

My father, after he retired from his business, used to cultivate orchids until his near fatal stroke at age 75 on the Eve of Chinese New Year in 1992. He laid unconsciously in the hospital for a month while my family withheld the news from me, for they didn't want to worry me since I just started a new job at Stanford Medical Center for a few months. How dare they were! He was my father! I was furious when I learned about it only after he regained conscious.

Took leave from my job, I flew back to Taiwan. By his bedside, I watched helplessly in his struggles to recover his lost motions and speeches. It pained me to see his frustrations over the slow progress to take control of his normal functions. I felt then that he was slipping away from me, from everyone who loved him dearly.

He eventually gained back a great deal of his strength, but life was never the same for him nor for my family. When I was nurturing the cattleya, maybe unconsciously I was also nurturing him hoping that he would be whole again. The cattleya grew and multiplied but he gradually withered away. Exactly thirteen years later, six days before Chinese New Year in 2005, he passed away after a very long illness. I realize it now, over the span of thirteen years, that I was saying good-bye to him in stages and this was the beginning of the long good-bye.

From one single cattleya seedling in a tiny pot, it has multiplied to six pots of adult plant. Last year when my cousin, Shirley, visited me from Los Angeles, I asked her to bring one back for Peggy. I often wonder how it does now? Does it ever flower there? I also wonder how he does in the underworld where he is so far away from his family?