Jade Green Succulent

When my mother decided to redecorate our living room, she developed what can only be described as a religious devotion to ceramic wall flowers. Not the quaint, grandmother-worthy kind that looked like they’d been stolen from a 1950s kitchen, but these massive green succulent pieces that seemed to have escaped from some modernist’s fever dream.

“It’s not just wall art for the living room,” she’d tell anyone who’d listen, cornering dinner guests like a botanical evangelist. “It’s modern artwork.” The centerpiece was particularly striking ?? a behemoth of glazed ceramic that dominated the wall like some prehistoric plant that had fossilized in mid-bloom.

My father, who’d spent thirty years perfecting the art of diplomatic silence, would just nod and smile whenever she launched into her spiel about wall art decor. But even he had to admit it beat her previous obsession with collecting commemorative plates featuring scenes from “Gone with the Wind.”

I caught her one morning, coffee in hand, staring up at it with the same expression people reserve for religious experiences. “It’s alive,” she whispered, and for a moment, in the early morning light, I almost believed her. Though that might have had more to do with the questionable mushrooms my brother had been growing in the basement.