In at the mouth / In at the eye

I can recall the uncanny number of times this summer that I have heard an old story about a shoot growing from a stump. I heard reflections on it read aloud after dinners, and I read it in several different books whose pages coloured with me in unfamiliar places under this summer's sun. I pluck leaves from trees and use them as bookmarks. I saw the story again while my nephew was baptized, told to little children while a preacher knelt by them in robes. In all of these accounts and in each of their contexts, the story talked of the shoot being a new plant. But this brand new shoot out of this stump should be seen as the very same. This new growth is the very same plant, its fervor and goodness climbing out of anything. There is a pause, but not an end.

A long while ago I was given a small cactus in a little brown plastic pot, wrapped in bright and red, metallic foil, and tucked in a paper bag. My gift giver overshadowed thoughtfulness with humility, but I accepted it with my whole heart. When I had the cactus at home, I sat it where I would always see it. It grew quite quickly, and I watched it stretch its stem up and out of the dirt around it, leaning bright green and a little crooked on my desk in the sun. But I did not know its proper care. I was excited at its quick growth, and in that excitement I gave it too much water. After some while it began to shrivel from top down, and its spines slowly flaked off. I learned about how to care for this, to cut off the top, and to add in some dry soil, possibly sand. I carefully cleaned off the little white tufts that grew along the ruts of its stem. I waited, and the cactus stood pale and hard. After a long passing, though, next to the scab that had puckered where I cut, the cactus continued growing. Its stem pushed up into a little bulb, with new spines flecked around it. I keep it where I see it. And it grows, and it grows.