The Christmas Cactus

A large stainless steel container sat at the top of the stairs in my grandmother’s rambling old farmhouse. It was the top chamber from an old milk and cream separator that Granddad had used on his farm. Raw milk was poured into the top bowl and a centrifuge separated the milk from the cream as it flowed through the machine; milk to drink and cream to be churned into butter.

The shiny metal bowl was nearly thirty inches in diameter and eighteen inches high and sat in the center of a large Mission Oak desk, designed to look like a library table with open shelves on each side and a wide drawer in the center.

Steep wooden stairs with its long curved handrail climbed the distance of twelve feet from first floor to disappear into the dark reaches of the second floor where Grandma Rebecca Miner kept her Christmas cactus. The large stainless steel container was the planter for that old Christmas cactus. It had long ago filled the creamery pot and eventually spilled over its full rounded sides, cascading in long green streams. It was enormous. Like a queen sitting on her throne and ruling the one end of the hallway.

It was cool and dark where the plant was located. The window behind the desk was covered by a green, room-darkening shade that Grandma kept pulled nearly all the way down allowing a small amount to light to slip through the eight inch space.

This monstrous sized plant had started its life as a snippet shortly after my grandparents wedding. Year after year it grew and grandma would transplant it into larger and larger containers; the size of the containers matching its growth.

The only container I remembered as I made visits to Grandma’s house was the enormous stainless steel separator. The plant stems grew to be thick and gnarled, paralleling the thickening and gnarling of my grandmother’s arthritic, feet, hands, and fingers. The plant’s flat-green, oval-shaped, ripple-edged leaves tumbled in thick tresses over the edge of the pot and flowed down its sides in waves. The leaves almost hid the entire container beneath its thick foliage.

Just before Christmas, that dark corner of the hallway would suddenly explode into color. The cactus would spill its blossoms in colorful waterfalls that floated on a sea of green leaves. Each bloom was a series of colorful trumpets stuck one inside on another. The colors ran the gamut of hues from a deep watermelon pink through a hot orange-red, and even into a pale yellow. They looked like small fiery torches blazing in a dark green sky.

The myriad of blossoms would only last for several days. One by one they bloomed, showed their beauty, and then slowly wilt and drop to the floor like a plague of dead insects, their colors faded to a ghostly white. They waited until they were swept them up and tossed into a trash grave.

When my grandmother could no longer take care of her large rambling farm house, she had an auction to get rid of all the things that would not fit into the mobile home she’d bought. I am not sure who bought the massive Christmas cactus, but I hope that it still fills another person’s home with its beauty each Christmas season.