I

n September of this semester, I made one of, if not 
the most, significant purchases of my 21 years to 
date: a houseplant.
But this purchase wasn’t just your standard, run-of-
the-mill desktop succulent (though don’t get me wrong, 
I have one of those too). This was a glorious fern, with 
slender green branches overflowing from her pot and 
smelling of earth and living things; carefully selected 
from her almost-but-not-quite as equally formidable 
peers at the Ann Arbor Farmers Market.
Late September in Ann Arbor is an unequivocally 
wonderful time of year. The city becomes the setting of 
those homey-feeling movies I watched as a child, the 
kind of films where kids run through crunchy leaves to 
catch the school bus and the perfectly-coiffed mother 
has a plate of fresh baked cookies on the counter every 
afternoon. 
Late September in Ann Arbor is when 
color-coding class notes is exciting, not 
draining; when every fleeting moment 
of eye contact from the boy who sits by 
the door in class feels like a budding 
new love affair; when I’m suddenly 
grasped by the all-consuming desire to 
buy a houseplant for my room.
A fern is not a freshman year of 
college purchase — where would it have 
fit in my South Quad dorm? Would it 
live between the mini-fridge stuffed 
with bags of Franzia and the piles of 
undone laundry? A fern is also not a 
sophomore year of college purchase — 
the year seven friends and I crowded 
under the roof of a shoddily-maintained 
house with squirrels living in the walls 
and a dishwasher overgrown with 
mold; when we huddled together in the 
living room in winter to try and stay 
warm while the windows rattled from 
lack of insulation. Junior year, perhaps, 
but the one semester I spent in Ann 
Arbor during this era was too largely 
spent anticipating the next semester 
abroad to even contemplate committing 
to something as serious as a houseplant. 
So here I was, late September in 
Ann Arbor, a senior with a Kerrytown 
apartment finally nice — or rather, 
clean — enough to justify buying a fern. I was feeling in 
love with life in the way that I always am during this time 
of year, thrilled to be back in my own college town after 
a semester abroad, ready to set down roots for a while. 
And so my new fern friend entered my life.
Said purchased fern took her rightful place on my 
mantel. Yes, my room this year has a MANTEL — 
seems fake to me too. In her new home, my fern nestled 
between stacks of books and other colorful knick knacks 
I crowded around her. An old doll swiped years ago from 
my grandma’s extensive collection, a $2 ceramic jar from 
Salvation Army, an old perfume bottle, all came together 
to create the perfect bohemian scene — framed against a 
backdrop of an old map of Paris, lest anyone forget that I 
went abroad.
For a week at least, I wouldn’t shut up about my new 

houseplant. Owning a plant, a real plant that’s not a 
minimal maintenance succulent, felt huge. Assuming 
sole responsibility for a living, growing thing was a task 
that I was ready and able, excited even, to take on.
And it wasn’t all giving, either — my new fern friend 
contributed just as much to my life as I exchanged in 
the currency of water and the opening of blinds. A room 
with a living, green entity feels drastically different than 
a room without. My personal space was alive, revitalized, 
reflecting the buoyant late September energy I was 
feeling toward school and life and things to come.
But somehow September has a way of ending, and 
October also has a way of stumbling by, and before 
anyone seems to have time to consciously process it, it 
becomes November in Ann Arbor. 
And November in Ann Arbor is fundamentally, 
monumentally different from September in Ann Arbor.

November in Ann Arbor is when the sun starts to set at 
5 p.m., when you walk out of class and it’s already night 
and the tips of your ears are somehow always freezing. 
November in Ann Arbor is skipping class to try and catch 
up for another class and falling deeper into a hole of being 
behind — the constant pressure of impending deadlines 
building up until the only task that feels doable is curling 
up under comforters in bed. November in Ann Arbor 
is when the shadow of job and internship applications 
becomes unavoidable, hovering ominously over the 
collective college consciousness and making its presence 
known at every possible opportunity. Friends sit across 
from each other at tables in Espresso Royale or the Ugli, 
so wrapped up in their own anxieties and thoughts that 
conversation feels stifled, fake and forced. November in 
Ann Arbor, in a word, is bleak.

Four years later, this bleakness still catches me by 
surprise. I was raised in an eternal summer — in the 
valleys of Southern California where the sun washed 
out and blurred together months. November was but 
an abstract concept. Growing up, I’d pictured the joy of 
September; an image pieced together through books and 
back-to-school displays in Target that sung the praises of 
orange and red trees and apple cider. Christmas movies 
and Budweiser commercials had given me a romanticized 
view of December with fresh, beautiful, clean white snow 
and carols and falling in love at skating rinks.
What lay in between, however, was an entirely new 
animal. Nobody makes movies about November.
And November is somehow even worse this year 
— because I can see the physical manifestation of the 
month in my fern, the friend that I purchased in that 
wave of late September optimism and sunshine. She’s 
a little brown around the edges 
these days — I’ve watched as the 
leaves at the tips of her branches 
crisp up and flutter down. The 
promise my fern exuded during 
those early autumnal days feels 
a bit diminished, dried up, passé.
Which of course makes me feel 
enormously guilty. I probably 
haven’t 
been 
watering 
her 
enough, or maybe too much? I 
definitely don’t always remember 
to open the blinds before I leave 
for class in the morning. As 
November has worn me down, it’s 
also worn down my capacity to 
look after living beings — whether 
that be my fern, my friends, 
or myself. November tends to 
feel like an excuse to draw into 
myself and listen to Bon Iver for a 
month, without investing myself 
in the opportunities and people 
and going-ons around me — a 
hibernation more acceptable in 
previous years when I didn’t have 
a living, green entity dependent 
upon me for her very existence. 
But I think my fern is going 
to 
pull 
through. 
On 
closer 
examination 
the 
other 
day, 
it’s really only the tips of a few branches that have 
gone entirely brown, and there’s even a few sprigs of 
fresh growth poking out from the pot. She’s definitely 
struggling a bit more than she was in late September, but 
also most certainly still alive and fighting.
My fern and I are still helping each other out. I’ve 
been trying to water her more regularly, and she’s 
still putting out some nice green living energy into my 
personal space during a time of year when everything 
else can feel gray.
And — most importantly — November is almost over. 
Which, I think, can be agreed upon as being a very good 
thing. And as much as I believe that November is just a 
universally bad time for the houseplants of the world, 
I also simultaneously have a feeling my fern is going to 
love December in Ann Arbor.

3B

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 // The Statement
3B

BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT, STATEMENT COLUMNIST

Love Letters to Ann Arbor: On 
houseplants and November

PHOTO BY MEGHANN NORDEN-BRIGHT

