Peach Mocha Cornflower

When my sister asked me what to hang on a kitchen wall, I briefly considered suggesting a framed poster of our family’s most spectacular cooking disasters. But then I remembered I was trying to be helpful, not passive-aggressive, so I pitched her the idea of a ceramic wall flower instead. “It’s modern artwork,” I explained, as if I hadn’t just learned the term from a late-night YouTube rabbit hole. “Very chic wall art decor.” The flower in question was a small, rust-colored number that looked like it had been fished out of the Titanic’s wreckage and given a new lease on life. Its petals resembled mussels from the sea, as if Poseidon himself had decided to try his hand at pottery while drunk on ambrosia. “It’s perfect,” she mused, “It’ll really tie together my collection of dented pots and that scorch mark on the ceiling from last Thanksgiving’s turkey incident.” As I watched my sister excitedly plan where to hang this aquatic-inspired ceramic bloom, I couldn’t help but feel a sense of pride. Here we were, two adults, seriously considering adorning a kitchen wall with what essentially amounted to fossilized seafood art. If this wasn’t a sign of our family’s evolving taste, I didn’t know what was. At the very least, it would give our mother something new to furrow her brow at during her next visit.