Cereus Magic

We were sitting at the dinner table at our friend Tune's house, finishing off a mixed berry pie, tart and sweet. There were vases of flowers, lovely as paintings, arranged around the sun room that glowed in hues of yellow and salmon. Through the windows we could see gardens and rocks like giant dorsal fins rising from the earth. Wendy brought her dog, Ben, who was happily tethered outside in the cool summer night. Tune's mom discussed books and her recent trip to Tanzania.


Next to our places, small pieces of paper had been placed, face down. When it was time, I opened mine and found a question: Describe a time you spent with one of your grandparents.


"First thought best thought," Tune said, meaning don't take time to think, just respond.


"I remember sitting on my grandfather's lap on a porch, probably at Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. We were in a rocking chair and he had his arms around me. I felt safe. He died soon after of Parkinson's."


Someone else was asked to describe an earliest memory. Wendy remembered sensations and light and being outside on grass that was parched white from the sun. Tune told about taking a match and trying to light her younger brother's trundle-bundle on fire, just to see if she could. Juan the Gardener remembered sitting in his dad's lap, picking splinters out of his dad's face.


"Splinters?" We cried.


"His beard was scruffy. It must have been a weekend and he hadn't shaved."


I remember climbing out of my crib using my teddy bear as a stepping stone to reach the bureau, and having the bureau tip over on me so that I was holding it up with two hands, like a baby super child. Now I realize it was a co-mergence of memories. At a later time I had climbed up the bureau by pulling out the drawers and it had tipped over and I had to call for help and Arnie, the nanny, was not amused. I had to climb: up into closets, into kitchen cabinets, up into the dancing tops of trees.


Juan described being at a party at his parents' house. He and a little girl were running naked from one end of the room to the other, laughing as they passed, not touching.


"So, that's the origin of our special game!" I laughed.


"Do you think it's true that men are led around by their peckers?" Tune's mom asked.


Then Tune said that tonight might be the night when her night-blooming cereus, a sprawling spineless climbing cactus opened its buds to produce pure-white flowers.


"It's so amazing," she said. "It only opens once all year and the fragrance fills the house."


"Maybe we ought to check." I said. 


Tune quickly left the table and we heard her exclaiming,"Oh! Oh! Come see!"


We raced into the den, and there framed by the window, dangling from snaky, green, glossy stems, two enormous white buds had begun to open; a magnolia-like fragrance spilled out into the room. 


We murmured ooos and aahhhs, and examined the flowers from underneath, from behind, from outside; we shone a flashlight into their creamy depths; we inhaled their perfume.  

"Oh!" Wendy called from outside where she was walking Ben.


"What?" We answered. On a mid-summer night like this, anything was possible.


Suspended in the silky near-darknesss, visible between pine trees, round and pumpkin-orange, was the full moon.

I realized as we stood together like rapt children all grown up, that to truly connect, one must dare to open from the heart bud, to open constantly, to burst into flower like the magical night-blooming cereus. 


After that, anything is possible.