In the sunroom on Snob Hill, the Christmas cacti have taken up their annual positions, side by side, equal light, equal water, equal care. And, as always, they have decided to behave entirely differently.

One is the mother plant. The original. The OG. One of our mothers gave it to us decades ago, already carrying a lineage. She had received the cutting from her Polish grandmother, Annastella. When she rooted it and passed it along, she did so with intention. She told us the soil came from her grandmother’s yard in North St. Louis, and she made sure some of that soil traveled with the plant. Not as sentiment, exactly. More as continuity. As fact.

The second plant exists because our dog Maggie, then a puppy and briefly feral in spirit, attacked the first one. We gathered what we could of the massacre, placed the broken pieces in a pot, and trusted the plant to do what Christmas cacti have always done. Root. Persist. Begin again.

They live together now. Same window. Same fertilizer. Same watering schedule. Same gentle neglect. And yet every year they disagree.

This year the mother plant bloomed precisely on time, right at the edge of Advent, unfurling blossoms in those improbable, church-window colors that feel both festive and serious. The other plant has decided to sleep. No buds. No explanation. Sullen, perhaps. Or simply difficult.

It reminds us of the bees. Two hives, one box, separated by nothing more than a slim plywood divider, yet the honey emerges wildly different, color, brix, character. Same landscape. Same weather. Same flowers. Different outcomes.

We are not superstitious people. We do not claim belief in the supernatural. But we are deeply susceptible to mystery. We allow ourselves, from time to time, to linger in that liminal space between the world as it is and the world as we imagine it might be, if we are paying close enough attention.

So we stop. We let the blooming plant stand as a small altar. A sign. A quiet visitation. Bright color against the dark, gray days of December. Presence made visible.

Hi, Mom. Good to see you. Come again soon.