By the time that support group met again, Tim had gotten a lot more practice at controlling his movements. He was able to log into the Zoom meeting without any assistance from his neighbors, although the whole time he was doing it he kept wondering why he bothered. He hadn’t gotten much out of it the first time, after all. But his normal socially-awkward video-game-playing lifestyle had been taken from him, and nothing was more intolerable to him now than being alone. Even if he wasn’t willing to actually participate, he could still feel like someone was there with him.
So he didn’t feel bad that he was barely listening to the other members of the group as they each had their turn to speak. A faceless, plastic mannequin-woman was saying something about getting harassed on the street. But Tim’s mind was wandering when he heard a sudden noise and saw a little red icon pop up in the corner of his screen. He was very surprised to see that he had just received a private message from one of the other participants in the call, and he was even more surprised to see a vaguely familiar name attached. Penny. But it took him a moment to remember just who he was thinking of.
“Hey!”, the message began. “I saw you were figuring out how to do things without help. So am I!” And he could see the loading dots that told him another message was coming. His eyes darted over to the other half of the screen and, sure enough, there was the sunflower he recognized from last week, working with great effort to flap one of her broad green leaves, and then the other, against the keyboard in front of her. The name “Penny” was right there in the corner of the screen - that was why it seemed familiar to him! The next message eventually came through. “I didn’t even think it would be possible at first, but I kept trying until I could do this!”
Tim smiled. After everything that had happened in the world, he still could hardly believe that something like this would happen to him. He wouldn’t have dreamed of trying to reach out to her unprompted, not after how long he’d been staring at her last time. But for her to want to talk to him... And for the two of them to have something in common besides just both being plants...
He quickly went into action, reaching out for the keyboard in his own barely workable way. He could type quite a bit faster if he stuck out two of his branches at once, something he just barely had the coordination to do. He pecked out a description of how his own experience of teaching himself how to move had gone. Soon they were having their own little private conversation, neither of them paying much attention to the group they were sitting in on.
They exchanged ideas about how to move and do things under such constricted circumstances. Apparently, for Penny, the trick was realizing how similar a leaf really was to a hand, with the veins in the same shape as blood vessels splayed out through it. “Once I thought of that, it was easy to control,” she said. And Tim found that she seemed to have a sense of good humor about her situation. “As long as I can see the sun,” she wrote out, “I’m feeling all right.”
That was as far as the conversation got before a calm, familiar voice cut through to Tim’s attention. “You seem to be in better spirits today, Tim,” said the stuffed animal that was hosting the meeting. “I know we didn’t get a chance to hear from you last week. How are you feeling overall, if you don’t mind my asking?”
Tim knew that this was just a friendly nudge and that no one was forcing him to participate in this group in the first place. But he still felt like a naughty schoolboy being called on by the teacher. His cartoony-featured face grew as serious as it could as he thought about what to say, how to answer that thorny question. He decided to go with the thing he needed the most psychological help with. That’s what he was here for anyway, right?
“Well, the thing I’m having the hardest time with is... I just found out a few days ago that I won’t be able to get turned back until after, uh... the holidays. And I just don’t know how I’m going to handle it if I have to spend the whole month of December looking like someone’s seasonal decoration...”
The teddy bear on the screen nodded, something inside him squeaking a bit as he did so. “Here’s my suggestion,” he offered warmly. “Decorations have never been what matters most. The holidays are really about people coming together. And not just Christmas, I mean all the holidays. Yes, even Halloween. And togetherness is what the world really needs right now.” There was a murmur of agreement from the whole Zoom call at that, although most people had their microphones muted.
“I know you’ve been fortunate to have people helping you out, Tim. So when you think about Christmas coming up and that word fills you with dread, you don’t need to think of yourself as being this decoration who’s forced into the corner. The only thing you need to associate Christmas with is people being together. As long as you have that, you have nothing to worry about.”
Tim wearily thanked the fuzzy little psychologist and then quickly hit the mute button. As he watched an anthropomorphic ketchup bottle take its turn to speak - another poor soul who had gotten the worse end of the novelty costume market - Tim wasn’t sure whether the advice he’d just been given was helpful at all. When he tried to think about Christmas, his mind still just drew a big blank. He certainly wasn’t flying home to see his family - he hadn’t spoken to them in months anyway, and he was sure they didn’t even know what had happened to him. He wondered if he would ever tell them. And if that was out of the question, what did he have to look forward to this Christmas?
By the time it occurred to him that he should go back to his conversation with Penny, it was too late. The Zoom call disbanded, and Tim was left staring at his own image again, the only square left on the screen.