1670s, in botany, from Latin radicula, diminutive of radix “root” (from PIE root *wrād- “branch, root”).
On this very day, my sister calls, and it’s not the Mr. O’brien sister and yet I race to pick up before it goes to voicemail anyway. I will turn out to be very glad I did.
Among other nice things in the conversation, she gave me another Christmas gift, in the form of a poetic image about myself and my relation to the part of the world most closely related to me, also known as my family.
It was a simple gift. She said that when it came to the family, I was the taproot.
(Radiculously diving deep for the water of the wellspring and pumping it up for use by the leaves.)
In a way very similar to the drummerboi image, I felt like she and I both knew exactly what this meant on some pre-literal, ante-logical ontological level. We both knew she was metaphorically spot-on.
It’s hard to explain why in words.
I think it’s partly because I’m oldest. It’s partly because I went off on my own, and never got adopted by husband number two, and was a dismal hippie failure of a human project in his eyes, and succeeded in my own. It’s partly because I am more badly broken and partly because I am nevertheless whole to the naked eye and on a good day make being unshattered look easy. On the bad days I wallow in the dirt that holds and binds my searching cilia and I don’t pick up the phone.
Explaining it in words isn’t important.
There’s a truth in it. She said it. We felt it together. It doesn’t make me a good person or a bad one. It doesn’t make me smart or dumb, tall or short.
I could say it was a job I have to do, but you all know how I’ve been feeling about jobs, and that’s not the way I feel about this. Maybe it’s life’s work. Maybe a role we’ve all given me. Maybe it’s just a thing I am, unbidden, unsought, maybe even a cross to bear sometimes, but not often. It’s featherlight and doesn’t have the weight of expectations. I chose it, or it chose me and we’ll never know which.
I can’t succeed and I can’t fail, at being the taproot.
It’s none of my business and part of my isness.
I accept the image and I’m grateful for it and I can’t even really say why it should inspire gratitude and grace.
It just does.
Thank you.
🥰