Our theme for the month of February is “plants.”

When I was first dating my now-spouse Heidi, she was employed for the summer with a Calvin nonprofit called Plaster Creek Stewards, a job which had her and her teammates stomping around in the dirt all around the local watershed, tending to some flora and digging up others depending on whether it was supposed to be there or not. One of the things Heidi brought with her from her time with that job, along with a newfound disdain for the notorious Kentucky Bluegrass,¹ was a(n adorable) habit of pointing out any miscellaneous vegetation she recognized and exclaiming to me the scientific name of the plant in question. “Look, it’s Asclepias tuberosa!” she would exclaim, pointing emphatically to a nearby flower.

For most of my life, I’ve found large-scale satisfaction in plenty of typical areas: expertise, camaraderie, competition, stuff like that. As a teen, I especially liked the obvious cross-section there, which was any competitive skill that I could participate in with my friends. Music competitions, forensics tournaments, competitive video games; in many ways I lived for the brief moments of intense payoff that came with claiming a well-earned victory, receiving an award, or sharing in those things with teammates.

But it wasn’t until I met Heidi that I started to learn how to truly delight in something as simple as knowing the name of a plant. And the simple things in which Heidi delights are many. Since first getting to know her, I’ve been introduced to a multitude of obscure joys in my everyday life; some that were already there, unrecognized, and some that were entirely new to me. 

Macaroni with hot sauce. 

A freshly vacuumed carpet.

Dogs with ridiculously long faces.

Shoes that actually fit me.

Stirring chocolate syrup into milk to make chocolate milk.

Listening to the lyrics of a song instead of the harmony.

Spending an hour customizing my clothes in a video game.

And so many others that now make daily appearances in my life. Notably, there’s a mixture here of childlike joys and more mature ones—both of which seem to have been more or less inaccessible to me before I met her. Not because I didn’t know they existed, but because I didn’t know it was even possible to revel in them, let alone how.

But this combination of joys is important because it demonstrates so particularly two of my favorite things about Heidi: she not only accompanies me courageously into the inevitable, terrifying reality of adulthood but also simultaneously invites me to return to the carefree rituals of childhood, pleasures that only lose their luster if you let them. I wouldn’t expect any kid to know the scientific name for a plant, but I also wouldn’t expect any adult who does know it to take such joy in that knowledge. That’s what’s amazing about Heidi.

Before I met Heidi, I thought some things were cute. But after knowing her for nearly three years, the amount of things I consider cute has probably increased by a few hundred percent, at least. And I think that in itself is pretty cute, too.

¹ The most common lawn grass species in the United States, which is an invasive species, and whose maintenance often requires absurd amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides, which in turn pollute the watershed. It takes up cumulatively thousands of acres that could instead make up gardens and other native ecosystems.

Philip Rienstra

Phil Rienstra (they/he) (‘21) studied writing and music, and since graduating has developed a deep interest in labor rights. They currently work at a unionized Starbucks and volunteer with Starbucks Workers United. They’re an amateur chef, a perennial bandana wearer, and an Enneagram 4. He lives in St. Paul with his spouse, Heidi.