The Resilience of the Cactus
The next few posts are going to be what I’ve learned from the few flowers in my life. Emily Dickinson lovers, rejoice! Gardeners, I’m sorry. My thumb is not quite as green as I felt at the time of these transition stories.
I grew up surrounded by cacti in Central New York. Mountains in the distance, suburbia up close, my father’s house was resplendent with both visible and invisible spikes.
One, a tall Cereus, stood humbly in an etched clay pot. The heaviest to move, it required shifting between our living room and backyard each season. Another, low to the ground and probably not technically a cactus, seemed harmless unless I backed into it while vacuuming. On occasion, my stepmother would cull from our living room’s greenery small cuttings to propagate. She’d set them in the kitchen window that opened onto the grass sentries guarding our square of land. And the grasses! Honorable, extended, they would slice your hand in your admiration.
It felt genetic when a past lover purchased a small cactus from an elderly woman in Iowa. Our apartment was dilapidated despite the mint green paint in the kitchen, and didn’t get much light. We put Franklin (I named him) in our kitchen window that opened onto the backyard shared by deer and our downstairs neighbors. Franklin did well there.
I kept the cactus in the breakup. Franklin and I moved to Chicago with a different short-term lover, and I placed him in the kitchen window by the stove that opened onto the small walkway between buildings. Franklin did well there, too. I, however, was a part of another imploded relationship and soon moved out. Of course, I kept Franklin in the breakup.
Imagine my grief when in my next apartment, a place truly mine, Franklin died in my kitchen window that opened onto a new alley. Perhaps this is why I see Franklin as an extension of myself. Perhaps, that is why I understand the cactus’s resilience to be only as strong as the conditions in which it is placed.
When Franklin came to me, I was angry yet repressed, barbed yet seeking tenderness, always in the dark yet needing so much light. As we moved through failed relationship after failed relationship, I learned about the places in and people with whom I could thrive, and nourished in my kitchen those connections that helped me grow into the person I am today. It is from caring for this cactus that I learned how to respect the limits of mine and others’ needs, how to give only enough water and stand back in admiration so we both have room to grow.
I eventually got a new cactus (a gift from a different former lover). It grew rapidly. The faux flower glued atrociously to its spikes held on despite the cactus’s slowly emerging length. I did not name that cactus, for the simple reason that I did not give it one. Definitions sometimes limit progress, and I wanted to see how it would shed its imposed decoration, reaching its spikes towards the hint of sky between the buildings and in search of just enough light.
I recommend getting yourself a cactus– or any plant really. And after a few months, I invite you to share the story of what you’re learning.
