a life worth saving

In 2004, I agreed to help out in the university student affairs department about 10 hours a week during a search for a new director of admissions. Since I spent about five years in a major university's undergraduate admissions office between 1984-1989, the senior administration figured I could help hold down the fort while they busied themselves with a national search. And although 14 years had passed since I had worked in undergraduate admissions, it’s a little eerie how much I seemed to remember about the business of recruiting and enrolling incoming freshmen. After signing on for the interim role of “deputy director,” I made a point of going over to the office and introducing myself to the staff.

Marta was a young woman who worked in what we affectionately referred to as the back room of the admissions office. In the old building, where I worked many years ago, it really was the back room – a tiny niche in the rear portion of an old house that had been converted into office space. Although admissions subsequently occupied a much nicer (and bigger) facility, another, more accurate term for the same work space might be "sweat shop." It’s the place where the really tedious work of filing all applications and support materials is done – none of it automated, all of it by human grunt power.

In the height of the admissions season, working in the sweat shop can be a lot like working in a mine shaft: you come in to work in the dark, and you leave in the dark. During the “season,” which lasts October to May, you suffer hundreds of nasty paper cuts, breathe plenty of paper dust while manually opening thousands of envelopes, experience sore, aching muscles from lifting heavy stacks of loaded folders, and alphabetize so many transcripts and other support materials that you start wondering whether a comes before or after z.

Shortly after I settled into my office in the admissions suite, Marta ventured in to see me. Marta was friendly, albeit a bit shy and rather soft-spoken. I liked Marta’s quiet but straightforward manner. She and I chatted for a while – just about the mundane things people share when they are getting to know one another. She knew, like everyone else in that office, that I was there for only a short term. But she still wanted to get to know me as a person.

That was just before I unexpectedly ended up in the hospital for emergency surgery. I returned to the office briefly afterward – thinking I could carry on as I normally do. Marta was first in my office to welcome me back. She handed me a small diffenbachia plant, which was cradled in a wicker basket, as a token of her wish for me to heal quickly. She had bought it for me while I was recovering at home. I exclaimed over the plant, and told her how much I enjoyed having the greenery in an otherwise bare office. I put the plant in the window and admired its healthy, waxy, multicolored leaves. As it turned out, that was the only day in the space of about a month that I went back into that office. I suffered a relapse, and it was several weeks before I could return to a normal routine. In that space of time, I never once went into the office, and of course I forgot all about the diffenbachia. Meanwhile, it was quietly dying by inches, slowly drying up, turning brown, and ultimately wilting in its sunny place on the windowsill.

Marta knew the plant was there, silently screaming for water, behind my locked door. No one opened up my office for those weeks, and of course Marta didn’t have a key to my office, so she couldn’t rescue the plant. About the third week, she couldn’t bear it any longer, and timidly asked if she could get some help entering my office so she could water the plant. I wasn’t there, of course, but apparently several people became involved in trying to open the door.

Once inside (I don’t know who came up with the key), Marta found the plant where I had placed it. It was nearly dead. Apparently the others in the office did declare it dead. Marta, however, carefully pulled off its withered leaves. She gave it a much-needed watering, and set it back on my windowsill. It had one remaining green leaf – a short, spikey little shoot that hadn’t quite unfurled. But the plant was alive. And, when I arrived back at work the following week, Marta was there to point out that it was indeed alive, but should be tended more carefully in the future. It was a life worth saving.