Mom's Poinsettias

Mom loves poinsettias. Every Christmas we had them in the house. They were as much a part of our holiday tradition as tinsel and stockings. From the beginning of Advent through the Feast of Epiphany, their red leaf-like blooms greeted us warmly as we came in on cold evenings.

By Valentine's Day the cheerful blossoms had all dropped off and the coffee table held sorry looking stems in faded pots. Dad kept trying to throw them away. Mom, the staunch defender of the pitiful poinsettia, would argue for the plant’s right to bloom again.

“It isn’t dead” she would tell him, “It’s dormant. If we just keep it watered, it will come back to life in the fall.”

So there the ugly thing would sit, gathering dust, until Dad could sneak it out of the house. He usually accomplished this by sometime in July.

This battle of the “lobster flower” went on until the Christmas I was in eighth grade. That was the year that the fate of Mom’s poinsettias was forever altered.


That holiday season there was an epidemic of red leafiness in our living room. It seemed like everyone who came over to offer us a bit of holiday cheer, brought one of the little darlings with them. Each time a new plant appeared, I could hear Dad quietly groan.

By the time the tree was taken down and the ornaments stored away for another year, there were more than half a dozen droopy looking poinsettias gracing the coffee table. Seeing Dad eyeing them deviously, Mom must have sensed she had no hope of holding on to her hoard, without a good survival plan. A few days later, she found one.

The previous summer, my parents had moved us to a new house on a corner lot. As Mom surveyed the large front yard with her botanical eye, she noticed a patch of dirt between the porch and the ivy bed.

“Here,” she boldly announced, “We will plant the poinsettias.”


“What?” replied Dad, somewhat taken aback.


“The poinsettia plants in the living room. I want to plant them, right here.” Mom retorted, in the voice she used when responding to some dim-witted question from one of her children.

“Just imagine how festive and welcoming the house will look when they start blooming again.”

Now Dad was a smart man who knew when he was licked. Shaking his head, he wandered off to find a shovel in the garage as Mom dispatched my sister and me to the house to collect the poinsettias.

Dad was not the handy-man type. Anything remotely resembling a DIY project tended to make him cranky. After a few attempts at “turning the earth” he irritatingly exclaimed, “This soil is too hard to plant anything in.”

Undaunted, Mom sent my little brother for the hose. Quite some time later, after saturating the soil with water, the bedraggled poinsettias were successfully planted.

As Mom stood joyfully admiring her yuletide garden, Dad, having had enough of the whole business disappeared with a newspaper under his arm.

“It will be so beautiful next Christmas?” she gushed euphorically.

By the following Thanksgiving, we realized that Mom’s vision had merit. The once naked stems aligning the front porch began blooming. Just as she had predicted, the house took on a more festive appearance that Christmas.

Mom’s poinsettia patch grew as new plants were added every January.

The winter that my brother was deemed old enough to wield the shovel, brought as much ecstasy to Dad as that first planting had given Mom.

About fifteen years later, Dad retired, the house was sold and my parents moved into a condo. Without Mom’s perennial garden greeting us as we came home, the holiday season lost a little gaiety. We all stopped giving her poinsettias for Christmas.

Now it was December, 1993. I had not thought about Mom’s yuletide plants for a long time. Dad had passed away eight months earlier, after a two-year bout with cancer. I was having a hard time getting into the holiday spirit.

I decided to focus all my energy into making Christmas merry for the youngest members of my extended family. Hoping this would somehow, vicariously infuse my own heart with a bit of cheerfulness.

The baby, Bridget, my little namesake, was only four months old. A few stuffed animals and teething toys would do for her. Sean, aged seven and Joshua, just turning three, were obsessed with Ninja Turtles and Power Rangers. Finding action figures and transformers for them was not difficult.

It was my five year old niece, Amanda who was posing a problem. Mandi had lived with my parents since she was a toddler. She and Dad had a particularly close bond. His passing had been confusing and painful for her. I was convinced that the “perfect” gift would make her little heart feel better.

>Mandi loved Cabbage Patch Babies.She was especially partial to the little boy ones. So, Aunty Bridge decided that was what she should have. The Cabbage Patch craze had died down by then, but even at its peak, BOY babies had been hard to find.

I spent weeks searching everywhere I could think of for one. I had been to no less than twelve shopping malls in four cities, without any luck. Now, Christmas was only a few days away. I was running out of time, yet I couldn’t seem to give up the hunt.

Driving across town to see if Toys-R-Us had gotten any since I last checked there, I found myself in familiar territory. Stopping for a red light, I could see the corner-lot house just ahead. As I pulled forward I saw them, Mom’s poinsettias. They had grown taller in the intervening years and their leafy red blossoms engulfed the front porch in radiant, cheerful welcome.

Part of me wanted to hurry past them, to look the other way. But, they drew me, like a honeybee to sweet nectar. I found myself pulling over to the curb for a better view.

Turning off the ignition, I sensed Dad’s presence. His down-to-earth, common-sense voice seemed to be speaking to my troubled heart. “Finding that doll won’t bring me back.” The tears that I had been holding back for weeks erupted like exploding champagne bubbles.

I do not know how long I sat there sobbing out my grief, as memories of Dad and past Christmas celebrations flooded my heart. Nor do I remember what I ultimately gave Mandi as a gift that year.

I do, however, recall buying a poinsettia later that day and placing it on my coffee table, where it proudly sat, until my daughter tossed it out on the Fourth of July.