To this day, I can still see her from the yard as I approached her home. Grandma would sit in her rocking chair next to the window, rocking slowly back and forth, her knitting needles flying in her fingers.

When I would spend the night at my grandmother’s, even her moments of sleeplessness were not wasted. I would get up to get a glass of water and find my grandmother reading in bed at 4:00 in the morning.  

But even so, I was always amazed when, a week before the annual Methodist Church Christmas Bazaar, I would walk in the door after school and find every available surface of the living room covered with handmade items.

She would pull out everything she had been working on for half the year and put it into neat little piles—stack after stack of handknit mittens, several baby sweaters, and hats for all ages. There were always at least one or two incredibly detailed quilts.

Thinking back on this, the thing that really blows my mind is that she also made handknit mittens for all her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There were six Besemer kids, and the Besemers were a prolific bunch. I sat down once and figured out how many mittens she had to make for the annual Besemer family Christmas. It was…a lot.

I was always proud to show up to the Christmas Bazaar and see all of these items on my grandmother’s table. My grandma made that, I would think. I would see her mittens and hats show up on classmates in elementary school.

One year, she was set up next to one of her friends from Sunday school, and this lady had plants at her table. They were funny-looking plants with weird leaves and plump red buds on the end of the stems. She had several on the table that she had grown from cuttings from her own plant.  

Odd plant, odd kid, we were a perfect match. I remember bringing the small holiday cactus home and watching it bloom. And then die because I was eight and had no idea how to care for a plant.

But my fascination with Christmas cactus stuck. Each fall, I recall my mother taking her huge plant and carefully setting it on top of the large chest freezer in the cold pantry off the kitchen. It would sit in that cool, dark room, with just a bit of sun coming in from the window in the door to the backyard.

It would stay there until early December, when the large boxes of oranges, tangelos and grapefruit from the Rotary Club would join it. Then, Mom would carefully carry it back to the living room to be set on its special plant stand near the window. And it would bloom just in time for Christmas.

These days, I know the large plant I grew from a cutting I received from another grandmother isn’t a Christmas cactus but a Thanksgiving cactus. It, too, has its own special plant stand. I also have a true Christmas cactus and a small Easter cactus. 

These plants are special and mean more than any of the other houseplants I have acquired over the years. They do more than green up my home. They bring to mind memories of home, Christmas, and the women of my family who are gone now.