“The Cactus”

I was sitting at the kitchen table the other day having a late lunch of split pea soup trying enjoying the view from the window, but I couldn’t escape the death stare I was getting. Yes, I was being eyed by a Christmas Cactus watching over me from the corner shelf. You read that right, a Christmas Cactus was giving me the hairy eyeball! And here is where I confess; I have let a Christmas Cactus guilt trip me and fill my head with worry for the last 10 year.

This story starts way before my birth. The actual year is unknown but by best guess this story starts about 75 years ago. My Great Grandma Walsh had the greenest thumb of anyone in Allen Michigan, I dare say the tri-county area. (The photo below shows just how talented she was.) Grandma Walsh grew the most beautiful Christmas Cactus in the land. And in summer this beauty held court on her front porch. At some point Great Grandma Walsh gave her Christmas Cactus to my Great Aunt Betty. She too had a green thumb and for years “The Cactus”, at least 24 inches in diameter, sat on a beautiful umbrella stand. During all my childhood I never once saw “The Cactus” with so much as a leaf blemish and each year it would display all its beauty in bright pink blooms. At some point in my childhood Aunt Betty realized my mom had a green thumb and so the plant got passed down again.

I remember summers when the Cactus sat in the semi shade of the back yard mostly ignored. When the winds turned chilly back inside the Cactus would come taking its place in the dining room. When my parents sold our childhood home The Cactus got a new prized spot in the dining room of the new house. Each year, come Christmas that darn plant would bloom up a storm.

The year I turned 49 my mother passed and then 9 months later my dad died. As my siblings and I cleaned out our family home one thing became clear. I was the new owner of ” The Cactus”, the one tangible item that had woven the generations together, “The Cactus” now took on a mythical quality. I had to keep this thing alive! I am not being the least bit funny here when I say, I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders, letting that thing die would somehow mean and end of the Walsh family, the end of the Green Thumb. By God this would not happen on my watch! I would NOT hear the mummers of my Nieces…

“Remember Grandma’s beautiful Christmas Cactus”, Niece number one would say.

Only to have niece number two utter, “Oh you mean the one Auntie MC killed.” “Good Lord who thought it was a good idea to gave that beautiful specimen of cacti to that black thumbed killer!”

I could not and would not become the, “black thumb killer!”

In the time I’ve parented “The Cactus” I have lived in two different houses. The first had the perfect spot for ‘The Cactus” to thrive, a dining room with a South facing window. With love and much care I got that thing to bloom, exactly once! Then I moved in with my partner, Dan. We have lots of windows but none are perfect, thus the shelf in the kitchen. I have kept The Cactus alive but I would not say it thrived…

Because the burden was becoming too much I devised a plan that would have me possibly breaking a few laws about crossing state lines with agricultural products. I rooted that sucker and snuck part of it in a bag to Vegas and handed it off to a cousin or two. My Walsh cousin in California could grow anything, her yard looks like Busch Gardens on steroids. I handed it off and felt an immediate sense of relief. I never asked her if she replanted it or how it’s doing. I prefer the guilt free image in my head where it is again the size of the plant on Great Grandma’s porch and people from all over Southern California stop by just to see it.

With that said, yes there are still times when “The Cactus,” void of blossoms, rebukes me and my black thumb from a shelf in the kitchen. But in my mind, the hand off in Vegas helps me believe I am not the only one holding the Walsh legacy together.