Dear Reader:

When I went to open my front door yesterday morning….the first three buds on “Big Red” had burst open and I thought to myself…’Christmas has arrived.‘ What a wonderful gift from Mother Nature! It brought a smile to my face…my amazing, “magical” geranium!

Six years! Six years “Big Red” has sat on my white bench…twice it has been removed for a “white paint” job on the bench and a few other times for overnight stays inside when the temperatures are in the twenties for a length of time…but outside of that…Faithful “Big Red” welcomes me out the door each morning!

When I returned home on May 29 2010 from my first mastectomy there was the geranium sitting on the porch. I remember it had been such a crazy day (with the children running around, picking up food, and then picking up me from the hospital) that no one knew or ever saw an attached card identifying the giver of the plant. To this day it is still (for me) a special life mystery.

Little did I know that this “magical” plant would still be by my side six years later as my greatest “Hope o’Meter.”  It has survived frost-bite requiring every limb but the main one to be amputated to try to save it (which miraculously worked); It has survived drought when I have been away for a few days and forgotten to ask a neighbor to water it…and pestilence in the form of little bugs that it slowly over came. It truly is my miracle plant….and my best front porch friend.

Today “Big Red”s health is still rather tenuous…its limbs look weak and break easily…but despite all the obstacles facing it…”Big Red” lives on…and not only lives but blooms! It blooms for me at Christmas!

“Big Red” got its name from a children’s book that I had used in a social studies workshop (for fourth graders) a couple of weeks before Mandy’s wedding and my diagnosis. It is the story of a family traveling west during the Gold Rush to make a new home and start for themselves.

The mother is very sad about leaving  home back east and at the last moment decides to take one memento of her life there… carrying a big red geranium in the covered wagon.

The little boy in the story knows how sad his mother is…leaving family and familiarity behind. When they soon begin facing obstacles and dangers (floods, droughts, famine) the boy shares his water with the plant and rescues it again and again from certain destruction…because he now has come to believe that if the red geranium survives…so will his family.

I have felt these same feelings, myself, watching “Big Red” struggle to survive the different seasons, for six years,  each season and year supplying its own set of potentially life-threatening hurdles. I gather strength from watching my ‘friend’ fight so valiantly for life…continuously.

…And so another Christmas has come….I am here, “Big Red” is here, and love is all around us. Who could ask for anything more?

So until tomorrow…Christmas arrives in all shapes and sizes…but for me…it comes in the form of a beautiful, proud, magical, red poinsettia. Merry Christmas “Big Red”!!!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh