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Cactus and kindness

Pique Christmas Stories
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The tradition of story telling is stronger at Christmas time than almost any other time of the year. Whether stories are read aloud to family and friends, or alone by the fire with a hot cup of cocoa, it’s an activity all cherish during the holidays. In the spirit of sharing, enjoy these stories written by Pique writers for you.

Happy holidays

from all of us to all of you.

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Cactus and kindness

By Cathryn Atkinson



For three wonderful children who I hope will have the best Christmas ever — and for all other children, too. Love, Mom and Auntie Cathryn.

Everyone was in the kitchen. Mom was overseeing the icing of the gingerbread and trying to explain something important to the children.

She dropped the final red daubs of icing around the edges of one large, bell-shaped cookie, then passed it along the icing assembly line to her left. "Kindness is not something you save up like the pennies in your piggybank. It's something that is meant to be spent over and over, and the best part is you never run out," she told them.

"What do you mean, Mommy?" asked Heather, aged seven, while licking some of her green icing from a spoon.

The four of them had spent the last hour or so in the kitchen; Heather, her older sister Carrie and their cousin Liam had helped stir the brown dough, and they each had several turns pressing the cookie cutter into it and pulling away any pieces that were not inside the cutter's bell-shape edges. The amount of unassigned dough shrank and shrank until all of it had finally been used up.

But as they pressed out the cookies the children learned, to their disappointment, that these treats were not meant for them. They were a gift.

They were meant for Mrs. Humphries, who had just come out of hospital. Mrs. Humphries' husband had died years before and she was alone. Her neighbours were keeping an eye out for her. She'd been in her home for over 50 years; her stay in hospital, the result of a fall, had shaken the 85-year-old lady and she was extremely fragile.

Liam, who was a teenager and who could have happily eaten everything on the counter in front of him on his own in under five minutes, accepted the bad news surprisingly cheerfully, while Carrie added her thoughts.

"It's two weeks until Christmas, and if we do this now we'll get more stuff on Christmas morning for being so good," she said.

"The grown-ups call that karma," Liam added, knowingly.

Carrie's mother decided to elevate the conversation a bit:

"Not all of them. It's more like this: 'Let the beauty we love be what we do, there are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.'"

The children fell silent.

"What on earth does that mean?" asked Carrie.

"Those are the words of a very wise poet," Mom said.

"But it doesn't rhyme," complained Carrie, who loved reading better than almost anything.

"Poems don't always need to rhyme," said Liam, who knew this from experience.

"It means that to do good and be kind to others connects us to what is good and kind in the world. It is a reward in itself and you don't need to be given stuff for doing the right and generous thing," Mom said.

Heather decided to chime in.

"Yes.... But can I have a cookie?"

Mom grinned.

"Not this time, Sweetie. We'll make some for us tomorrow. After we box these up you are going next door with Daddy to give these to Mrs. Humphries, and she will think you are a kind and good girl and be very grateful to have such delicious things that you made with your own hands. Doesn't that sound nice?"

"That does sound nice," admitted Heather. "OK. Just this once."

***

Dad made sure Mrs. Humphries was comfortable and she allowed him to go into her kitchen to make her a cup of tea. After he completed this task, he went outside to clear her walks of snow and left the three children to their special presentation.

Mrs. Humphries had already invited them to take a seat, but they were still standing around shyly. They looked around at the room, which was warmly decorated with tinsel and a tree; four long rows of Christmas cards were hung on strings fastened along one wall. A clock ticked loudly.

"That's a lot of cards," Carrie said. "And it's not even Christmas for two whole weeks."

"That's true," said Mrs. Humphries. "I'm very lucky. I have many friends all over the place, but not enough that live close by so it's very nice you came to visit."

Finally, Liam remembered.

"Heather, give Mrs. Humphries her gift."

Heather thrust a small box with snowman wrapping around it at the old lady, who took it excitedly.

"Thank you very much, dear! Would you like to put it under the tree?"

"No! It's for now. You can open it now, please," said Heather. "Now."

"Alright, I will, but only if you all sit down," said Mrs. Humphries.

So Liam, Carrie and Heather sat on the long brown couch. Mrs. Humphries would have turned her attention to the wrapped box, but before she could she noticed Carrie staring at the plant on the table.

"Do you like it?"

"Is it broken?" Carrie replied, turning her head sideways to take in what to her looked like a chain-link of leaves.

"Why would you think that?"

"It's very flat," said Carrie. "It's like somebody flattened it."

"It is," agreed Heather.

"And why are the leaves growing that way? It's very funny looking," Carrie said.

Mrs. Humphries explained that it was a cactus, a special cactus.

"Where are the prickles?" asked Heather.

Mrs. Humphries brought her tea to her lips, and the children became aware of her life-marked hands. Then she spoke.

"This type of cactus doesn't grow in a desert, it's normally found in the tropics. Did you know that?"

The children shook their heads.

"Maybe it was once in a desert and the jungle grew up around it over time. Whatever happened, it was no longer in the desert, where it would have been at the top of the plant kingdom. In the jungle it was just one of many, many species of plants. It didn't need its thorns because with so many plants around it for animals to feed on it was left alone, and so its thorns grew smaller and smaller until they were no danger at all, but they're still there — even on my plant. Where do you think they are hiding?"

Heather and Carrie and Liam looked all over the cactus and were stumped.

"Do we need a microscope?" Carrie asked. It was Mrs. Humphries' turn to shake her head.

"Can you see the little hairs on it?" she asked them.

Liam spotted them immediately. They were tiny but grew all over the plant and they weren't sharp at all.

"Those were once the cactus's thorns," Mrs. Humphries said. "And see how the flat leaves are all joined together end-to-end? Do you see? The wonder of this is that those aren't its leaves, those are the stalks of the plant. It's altogether the most unusual thing. For years I thought they were the strangest leaves I ever saw, and then I found out the truth."

This cactus grew on the tops of the tall jungle trees and not the ground where there would be too many competitors for sunlight, she told them.

"But you know what the best thing about my cactus is?" Mrs. Humphries asked. She didn't wait for a response.

"The best thing is that these plants only flower on the shortest days of the year, which is soon, around Christmastime. And that's how it got its name — we call it a Christmas cactus."

"So there will be flowers?" Carrie asked.

"I'm a little worried about that, actually. I've had this plant for 17 years. Normally there are dozens of flowers, but they would be budding by now. I'm not sure it will happen this year," Mrs. Humphries said sadly.

She explained that since she had been in the hospital her cactus had been neglected, and she wasn't sure if it would flower this Christmas or ever again.

"They're very delicate," she said. "But I do love the flowers. They look like shooting stars to me."

As the children pondered this, Mrs. Humphries finally opened the box and found the cookies inside. Exclaiming over them, calling them exquisite and other nice things, she took a bite of one and declared it tasted even better than it looked.

She held out the box for the children to help themselves. Liam was going to say that they were meant only for her, but two pairs of younger eyes threw him a look that kept him quiet.

Heather was the first to reach in.

"You're very kind," Heather told Mrs. Humphries, helping herself at last to the cookie she had decorated and had her eye on all along because there was extra icing on it.

Mrs. Humphries beamed.

Not long after, their father had finished the walks. He came back inside and revealed his main mission, to invite Mrs. Humphries for dinner on Christmas Day. She accepted.

"You've all been very kind," she said. "It's too much."

"My mother says you can never have too much kindness. Because we never run out of pennies," Carrie said.

"Kindness pennies," Heather corrected her.

Mrs. Humphries decided she had a few kindness pennies of her own and told their father that she wanted them to take the Christmas cactus home. He declined until the clamouring children made it impossible, so they wrapped it carefully against the cold and home it went.

***

Over the next few days, Mrs. Humphries was proven wrong about the cactus.

It began to bud rapidly, hugely at the end of every chain of leaf-like stalks. When Liam dropped by the following weekend to visit his cousins he was surprised by the change. By Christmas morning, there was an explosion of long, white tropical flowers at the end of every stalk.

They did look like shooting stars, just as Mrs. Humphries promised.

Finally the big day and big dinner arrived. Even more important to them than opening their presents, Carrie and Heather wanted to show Mrs. Humphries the Christmas cactus.

When the old lady came through the door on the arm of their father, who had helped her navigate the ice and snow between houses, the girls were waiting to show her. Mrs. Humphries was thrilled and told them it had bloomed beyond all her expectations.



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