When I was just a few years old my great grandmother passed away. My family gathered at a beautiful old plantation home to divvy up what remained of her possessions. I can barely even remember it but I recall the little piece of a begonia hybrid my mother took from the side garden. It was a weird, stunted little clipping but it took root in a shot glass in the windowsill of our kitchen. And it grew.
As it aged it cast off fleshy little plumes that we would give to family and friends. They would also sprout in glasses and small clay pots and become their own bizarre little selves. Some would spark tiny pink blossoms, some would develop white pocked leaves, some would rise with ruby veins. It was incorrigible. Unique in its branching but always tied back to its roots. To the one who gave it to you, to the person you gifted a leaf; to the pretty little spurt of petals you shyly handed to to someone cute.
It's so easy to get numb to the difficulties of life. To the inevitable sadness that comes and the overcoming we all must pursue. To the pain that repeats and the anguished glossiness through which we have to view the future too often.
But there's this little plant next to me every day. It links me to family I never knew and wraps its vines around the people I am glad I do know. A perpetual life reminding me of a warm day my family was together, of a rainy afternoon I was with friends and had to quickly retrieve it from the deck so it wouldn't drown. So the connection would not be cut.
There are seedlings we sprinkle about within each other, and they grow despite us. When we're hurt they still blossom and when we look downward in morose worry they still reach ever upward.