“Mom, we cannot take Audrey.”

One of the most endearing things about my mother is her belief that it will all work out just fine. It is also one of the most annoying. Audrey, for the record, is a plant. It would be easy to believe that this plant is related to the plant in Little Shop of Horrors. It may even have eaten several people. I couldn’t swear that it hasn’t happened because Audrey has nearly killed me a time or two.

“Why can’t we take Audrey?”

“Because if we take Audrey, there will be no room left to take you.”

Audrey is a plant of uncommon (frankly ridiculous) size and lush growth. You could hide a bicycle behind its sprawling tendrils. You could hide an adult riding a bicycle as long as they crouched over the handlebars. It is entirely possible that we will have to crane Audrey down from my mother’s second floor apartment. There is absolutely no way this plant will fit through the door of an RV.

Which is how I came to be driving back to my house in an SUV with the seats laid flat and large bits of Audrey poking out of the sunroof and all four windows as I grumbled a litany of uncharitable things about my mother’s green thumb. It’s also how I came to nearly break my neck and several other important body parts trying to take down and re-hang a 50-pound plant.

Audrey was the first of many things I inherited as my mother packed up her apartment and prepared to move.

It all began with a death, which isn’t the least bit funny, and a pandemic, which isn’t either, but then if everything in life were funny, nothing would be.