Holy Moments

My mother had a green thumb. Where ever we lived (seven houses) she tended houseplants in nearly every room. African Violets bloomed in the kitchen window, a big palm or Ficus tree filled a sunny corner of the living room, Peace Lilies adorned side tables in low-light areas, and all manner of Hens & Chicks, Mother-in-Law’s Tongue, and Jade Plants thrived on our Southern porches and patios. Succulents were her favorites.

She seemed to nurture these plants by instinct. I rarely saw her look anything up in a book, and she died before we had access to the Internet. Dad often remarked she could get a broomstick to sprout. There is so much more about plants I wish I had learned from her before she went to help tend God’s garden.

I do have a piece of her Crown of Thorns plant though. It began as a clipping from her plant on the patio where she and Dad lived in Baton Rouge, La. I brought it back several years after she died via airplane to my home in Durham, N.C. This was pre-9/11. I doubt you could board a plane today with a handful of thorny stalks protruding from a wet paper towel wrapped in aluminum foil.

At home I dipped the stalks in rooting powder, inserted them in potting soil mixed with sand, and set the pot by a large window with full morning sun. Over time the Crown of Thorns grew and thrived to three feet in diameter. It spent happy summers outside. The production of bringing it indoors each autumn became more complicated. We wrapped it in beach towels to spare whomever was carrying it from the thorns, which were tough enough to pierce garden gloves. Someone else held the door open.

My husband admonished me many times to “give it a haircut,” even though it sat in a corner of the dining room where no one ever wanted or needed to go. I did give cuttings to a couple of friends.

Last summer I moved from that house to start a new life in an apartment as a single person with joint custody of two teenagers after 24 years of marriage. The Crown of Thorns came with me. It was as important as bringing the cherry coffee tables Dad, a gifted woodworker, had built. Until late autumn the plant lived happily at the downstairs entrance to my second-floor apartment with plenty of sun and room to sprawl.

By the time it needed to come inside to avoid frost though, I was seriously ill with complications from chemotherapy. I spent more than half of October in the hospital. My sister who came from Alabama to help offered to bring it in for me, but I was worried carrying the heavy awkward load upstairs would hurt her back.

“I’ll get the kids to help me with it later,” I insisted.

But, between my own difficulty with asking for help, illness, push back from the kids about smaller requests, and my guilt over the divorce’s impact on their lives, I let it go. The frost got it.

Through winter, in and out the front door I kept passing this brown collection of thorny stalks, a punk Medusa reminding me that I am a plant murderer: willful negligence.

Then the guilt evolved into a voice telling me that this plant was just another casualty of the move quickly followed by chemo. There was only so much I could do. Let it go. Yes, I should have gotten someone to help me bring it in, but that’s an area I still needed to grow in. At least I was letting a neighbor grocery shop for me and others give me rides to appointments. A person can only do so much growing at once, right? Still, I felt bad, very bad.

Finally, on March 2, the day after Ash Wednesday and with the onset of Spring, I decided it was time. Take control, celebrate surviving the winter, and embrace spring. Do those things left undone.

My big event of the day was standing on a chair and drilling holes in the hard, wooden post on my balcony to hang the bird feeder. My arms were so weak, I couldn’t hold the cordless drill above my head without rest spells between getting each screw in the bracket.

Next I approached the Crown of Thorns. Ready to pull out the dead stalks and walk them to the apartment trash compactor in final defeat, I found a few sprigs with life still in them! Fortunately, I had soil, because a previous “big event of the day” was buying a small bag especially for cactus to repot my Jade and Reindeer Cactus.

Wearing an N95 mask, because I was still being treated for the pneumonia of October – ironically from the type fungus commonly found in soil and mulch – I carefully teased out the small live sprigs with their tiny roots and replanted them in a new pot of the specialty soil. Then, I triumphantly texted a photo to my sister in Alabama.

As spring warmed into summer, I moved it out to the balcony where it has begun to thrive. Since then I, too, have increased in strength, stamina, and general health. As the stalks burst forth new leaves and began to bloom, I had a good lung CT and blood work, finished taking my antifungal med, and got my chemo port removed. Now I am writing daily and taking online classes, building a blog and preparing a nonfiction book proposal.

Both the Crown of Thorns plant and I have a strong inner core and determination to survive. We have endured harsh conditions and willful negligence. Yet, we have the capability – with God’s help – to thrive. Given a habitat rich with the right balance of water, sunshine, nutrients, and protection from the cold, we grow lush and green. We even flower over the scars of frost damage and thorny defense mechanisms.

I am glad I got a second chance to nurture this plant and keep the spirit of my mother, the gardener, alive through this legacy of hers. She and I had a complicated, thorny, relationship from which I am healing. A big part of that, I am coming to realize though, is recognizing and celebrating the good parts of who she was and what she taught me. Let go to the trash compactor of time the dried up, thorny dead parts.

This must be why it mattered so much to me to keep this plant going, to give it what it needs to be the healthiest Crown of Thorns it can be. During the barren winter after the frost got it, I felt what anyone feels when they are seriously ill. I wanted a mother to soothe me, the way I have soothed my own children, to anticipate my needs, and to assure me that everything will be all right.

My biological mother wasn’t available to do that and likely would not have been capable of it had she been alive, but God sent others to mother me during that time: my sister from Alabama and other friends locally and online. Now, I can bring back and celebrate the best parts of Mom through the flowers and birds of spring and summer as I embark on a new life.

God provides all of us new pots, new soil, new habitats, and new nurturers. Sometimes we have to go through an ugly, dirty process to fully embrace these gifts. Sometimes we have to make hard decisions, without a guaranteed outcome, about pruning or dead-heading, or simply letting parts of ourselves or relationships succumb to the frost.

Only then can our healthiest parts flourish to tell His story and to serve His kingdom.