Philodendron
I paced around my son Derek's apartment while he took a shower. It was Christmas Eve morning, and I'd slept over the night before. The apartment, which he inherited from me, was filthier than it had ever been, even under my neglectful housekeeping.
“Don't do the dishes!” he commanded from behind the bathroom door.
The place smelled.
I had to do something. After hunting around for some scissors, I started snipping at the dried brown stem of the philodendron, pulling it away from the string of twinkle lights across the windows.
Many years earlier, the chick from two doors down the hall, who sported blond dreadlocks and a pierced lip and worked at the coffee shop up the street, she’d come knocking on my door. We'd never spoken in the few years she’d lived in the building — never even made eye contact — but apparently, on that day, she was moving out, and for some reason, she’d chosen me to take possession of her philodendron in its white plastic pot. She placed it into my hands, saying earnestly, as though I'd understand, “I don't think it will survive the move.”
I assured her I'd take care of it, and closed the door. What a weirdo.
Drawing together the multiple trailing strands, I twined them into the pot. After watering my new houseplant, I then stuck it on the top of the refrigerator, at the back.
By the time I moved out, ten years or so later, leaving the apartment to Derek, the philodendron had crawled its way along the wall from the fridge, over a painting, up the curtains to the curtain rod, and had twisted and curled itself along the line of twinkle lights I'd run across my windows.
Friends had often remarked on the prolific philodendron, and I accepted the compliments, admiring it myself, though honestly, I had nothing to do with its ability to endure.
“It's easy to take care of,” I’d told Derek when I left him and his roommate to live in the apartment; also leaving them with the yucca plant I’d received as a wedding present, and a dusty old cactus. “Just water it every now and then.”
But of course Derek didn’t. And on that day before Christmas, while he showered, instead of washing the pile of dishes in the kitchen sink, I snipped the dead philodendron remnants away. The place looked a million times better.
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Life just got life-y…
Frumpy, floundering, and forced to live with her martini-swilling mother, Trudy Asp is swamped when her ex-hubby gets engaged to her dental hygienist, and her daughter announces she’s getting married in Europe, forcing Trudy to face a paralyzing fear of a transatlantic flight. She’s got three months to squeeze herself into a gown and claim the role she wants more than anything: Mother-of-the-Bride.
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