Home is where the tickseed grows, I told myself. The little native Texas wildflower, with a thin, dry stem and yellow petals, sometimes dotted in the center with red, and always surrounding a shiny black center. I grew up on the Texas coast, where the tickseed frames the houses and I couldn’t walk down the street without being recognized because of my theatre performances or my artist mother who looks just like me or some hijinx I’d gotten up to with the same six friends I had kept close my whole life. My home in Galveston was right by the beach, not ten blocks away, but I told myself moving to the desert would be no problem at all, would feel just like home, because it is Texas, so it’ll have tickseed growing, and home is where the tickseed grows.

           Driving out the fifteen hours in the middle of August I didn’t see any tickseed at all. I identified other plants. Invasive ones and native ones and edible ones and poison, but my favorite, my marker of home, was missing. But it’s fine, I told myself, since tickseed is a spring-and-early-summer flower. Of course it wouldn’t stick around through August. And the mountains sprouted up around the car, and then the coastal plains were desert mountains. And then I got to El Paso. And the prickly pear cacti had bright reddish purple fruit on them, which was familiar, so come spring, I would see the tickseed bloom.
           But the ground was rocky, and gaps in the sidewalk were so seldom filled with green grass, and most of the plants had a sprinkler next to them, because it doesn’t rain out here in the same way it does back home. And I couldn’t even see the little round bulbs that tickseed leaves behind once the petals fall and rot. But I could make this home, I would have to, because now I’m at the beginning of four years here, so the tickseed would bloom, if I could just be patient, in the same way it lit up the graveyard near my house with bright golds and yellows.

           Fall into winter was an interesting transition for the plants. The unharvested prickly pear fruit withered and became another part of the plant. The leafy branches I dodged past on my way to class became barren, though not any easier to dodge. I felt a bit of a sinking feeling when I first saw. This was new for me. Back home, we picked as many fruits as we could, and the branches were often evergreen, or at least they appeared that way until the January freeze. With the branches bare, I felt the need to strip the leaves from my life, as well, and just focus on making it through to the spring.

            I went home for winter break. It wasn’t as I remembered it. Many of the people there who I loved were away at school, and it felt something like those bare branches did, the structure without any of the green spots of joy I had only just began properly expecting to dot my life. A few friends came back, and they were those little leaves that held strong even as all the others fell off, but they were also back at school before too long. 

           When I returned, the first flowers were starting to bloom. Little yellow ones, no bigger than forget-me-nots, little dots in the grass. I hardly noticed those, not ready to loosen up and put energy into anything but the bare minimum. I just needed to get through until the tree branches were no longer bare.

           The trees weren’t the first thing I noticed. The prickly pear cacti flowering were my first indication of spring. A familiar “face”, at long last. I must have been smiling the rest of the day. 

           It took some time to properly readjust my mindset back, to let myself calm down and feel at home again. The leaves began to repopulate the branches I dodged past on my way to class, the oleander near the shuttle stop began to bloom its vibrant, deadly pink flowers. Surely, any time now, the tickseed would peek up from anywhere with grass, any cracks in the concrete, any spot that it possibly could grow.

            I saw firewheels by the education building. My second-favorite Texas wildflower. They’re edible as well, same as tickseed, but their stalks are hairy and their yellow and red petals surround an often white or yellow fuzzy center which has the texture of biting into a cattail, and they have roughly the flavor of bug spray. But usually, when I see them, they’re smaller than my thumb. These ones were easily half the size of my hand. I took so many pictures, and that morning was the one that properly pulled my mindset from the cold, dark winter into a lovely spring.

           The months marched on, and then it was May, my last month here of the school year. And still, there was no tickseed growing. It was the day I realized that tickseed simply doesn’t grow out here that my mom called to tell me my grandfather had died. My friends were in the room when she called. I think I probably tried to keep talking with them after the call, as though nothing had happened, and I know they shut that down. Hugged me. The next day we hung out again and they had gone together and bought a cake and a stuffed animal, and the whole time we hung out we were smiling and laughing together. And then they kept showing up for me, and I showed up for them.

            Home is where the friendships grow. The tickseed has very little to do with it.