This is my grandmother's cactus. I first met it on her windowsill. In the kitchen. By the stove. Where it lived unobstructed, and smothered in all that rare south-facing light. Miracle light, but then my grandmother died, and there was no one around to water it. So now, it lives with us.
It reminds me of being small, and walking with her. She who knew of plants, and herbs, and beautiful in green. After she died, my mother adopted all of her plants, and to me, that's the most beautiful, most intimate tribute you could pay to someone who's no longer here.
Remembering them isn't exactly the same as remembering the things they cared about, and that mattered to them.
The cactus now lives on my own, modest windowsill that seldom catches light, and where it must move often, because I like open windows, but not blaring car horns.
Anyway, when I came back home after ricocheting a bunch through Europe, the house tasted like amazonia, and I felt like there was no more room. I didn't mean to knock it off, but I did, and felt terrible. Because it had once belonged to someone, but more so, because now, it belonged to someone else, for whom this little prickly succulent mattered. But then, keeping an eye on it the next several days, I came to the realization~
Plants have extraordinary capacity to heal.
People do, too, only less, because when the world was young and frightened, they got tricked into thinking no one would hurt them. So now, when someone knocks a window into our side, we get caught up on why they did it.
Cacti don't get caught up in the why. I don't think they spare any focus on why someone would be so careless as to ram them with a window, at all. It's in the past, and what matters to them is regenerating the tissue that the window tore through, so they can stand as a whole, again.
And here, I thought I was so much better than the plants, when I first got here. But I see now, I ain't. See, I can pinpoint the times I got hurt, but not all of them, and I always get hung up on how it happened. The position I was in. What I did to further or encourage hurt. How I hurt.
Plants don't, 'cause that keeps you stuck in the act itself, rather than in the immediate aftermath, where you should be. While you're busy thinking of all the ways you should've reacted and protected yourself, and done different, and made better words with your mouth, you keep yourself pinned in place. In the moments leading up to the hurt, in the immediate before.
Except you're not supposed to live in the before, because there's no oxygen there. Putting yourself in mind of all the things you could've said or done to avoid a traumatic event doesn't actually relieve, in any way, the trauma. Rather, it forces you to re-experience it over and again.
You could've said, but you didn't.
The cactus could've been on the table, and not on the ledge.
But it was not.
Hurt happens, and paradoxically, it's easier to pick it apart, than it is to allow it to heal. For me, the last few months have focused heavily on healing. Mostly for wounds I didn't know I had. Some days less than others. Some days, frozen in place by dawning realizations, by acknowledging hurt in all the frightened places that need tissue to regenerate the most.
It's why I've been absent from here, among other things. I needed to find such absolute quiet that I struggle yet to explain. And in that quiet, to find that thorns won't keep the window from swinging, or from knocking you in the head. That it's easy and good to put up your dukes, and protect yourself, but knowing how to float all them essential, helpful fluids and cells to the wound site, that costs a lot more.
I still need a lot of quiet. And now I sit in the quiet, sipping coffee, and wishing for sun. Looking at the cactus, and thinking how strange it must all seem to it. Does it wonder about the south-facing ledge with plenty of sun? Or about the old woman who knew when to water it, and never hit it against the window ledge?
Probably not, that's just me. But I'm learning to think different.
