My husband left on a month-long business trip, and I tried to transfer his favorite potted cactus, but I shattered it while moving it. But what I found in the shattered pot altered everything. How weird that random incidents may affect our life.
Simple, apparently trivial things upend everything and change everything. My turning point was a common cactus. Maybe I should start my narrative there.
Early Saturday morning. Spring sun illuminated our flat in warm gold. My husband, John, spent a month in New York on business.
Long absences were common at his major construction firm. I was used to his absence, yet I missed him. Since I was alone in the flat, I rearranged some furnishings. I wanted to update the décor for a long, but John was conservative and wanted everything in its place.
He was especially reverent about his cactus collection, which he’d been collecting for several years. On the windowsill of our room, there was a row of thorny plants of different shapes and sizes. John cared for them with a special tenderness, which he rarely showed me.
Among all this thorny company, one cactus stood out. Large, with fleshy leaves and long, sharp needles. John called it “General.”
This cactus appeared in our house about three years ago, and my husband always treated it with special affection. Even on business trips, he left me detailed instructions on how to care for it. It was strange, of course, this attachment to a prickly windowsill dweller, but I didn’t think much of it.
People can have all sorts of quirks and passions. That morning, I decided to move the dresser that was against the wall opposite the bed. For several months, I had been obsessed with the idea that it would look much better next to the window.
What happened next changed everything… FULL STORY on the next page.
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