Lavender

Lavender                         4-30-2013

By John W. Vander Velden

Mom loved her cactus.  One of the few things she brought with her to this country, as a bride, was a cutting of her mother’s cactus.  Carefully she nurtured it for more than ten years before it bloomed.  For fifty years she added others to her collection…You see mom loved cactus.

Life’s demands, years of hard work, decades of just doing without, had left their mark.  From those closest, she hid her frailty.  We saw only her strength.  But deep within, beneath her protective shell, remained a soft heart.  Perhaps that is way mom loved cactus…with their quills.  For she knew when at last they would bud, the blossoms would be breathtaking.  Cactus are more than they appear.

Among the latest addition to her cacti collection, a grand spiny succulent, which would at times show several large spectacular flowers, stood in the front window.  Unwilling to move the plant, she would admire the magnificence from the yard.  Times as many as six blossoms, each nearly as large as her hand faced the sun.  She took particular pride in that plant.  You see mom loved cactus.

During the terrible months of mom’s illness, that plant did not bloom.  However, on the day following her departure from that prison her body had become, when I alone walked the floors of what had been her home.  I saw the single grand flower…delicate…lavender.  Mom loved cactus…and it seemed the cactus loved her…

(242Words)