The Orchid

You’re nineteen the day you receive a check in the mail—your coffee black as ink, your cat fat and curled in your lap like soft serve. Lips closed around a steel mug, you gurgle and spit as you process the check, the familiar loop of the G’s, the unmistakable I’s dotted with stars. It’s from Aunt Marie, along with a periwinkle sticky note: "I’d rather see you enjoy this while I’m alive then leave it for you later." Aunt Marie, who recently underwent a double mastectomy for her stage two breast cancer, is your very own godmother. The number on the check reads twenty thousand dollars and your cat sleeps through your warm trickle of rain, the clouds in your eyes. That night, you dream of twenty thousand knickknacks from the Dollar Tree and of actually buying a house. In the morning, you can’t choose what to do and so you wait.

You’re twenty-one and you have 19k left. You spent a thousand dollars helping your friend Jessie lease her first car. Now your remaining cash comes with rules—Aunt Marie says you are only to use it, solely, unequivocally, to spoil yourself. It takes time for you to figure out what that means, but eventually you purchase a pottery wheel. There’s something lulling about your fingers caked in the clay, watching slight pressure change the shape of your vase as the wheel head spins. At first, the bowls and cups and piggybanks you make are terrible, albeit satisfying. But eventually, you feel a deep sense of pride for the pieces you bring to the local kiln. Your cat purrs at them approvingly.

You’re twenty-five when you meet Aunt Marie for breakfast at a diner by her house, three hours away from yours. She sits at a booth stacking tiny pads of butter into an unstable tower. When she sees you, she doesn’t stand, so you hurry and lean down and hug her, inhaling her scent of honey and sunlight. A small black Moleskine notebook sits beside her on the counter. You take out the ceramic mug you painted last week with koi fish and orchids, her favorites, and then trade. She promises to drink more antioxidant healing tea and you promise to write. The pancakes arrive at your table, spilling over the edge of the plates, and you show Aunt Marie how to fold them in half like a burrito. She calls them “Pancake tacos.” You write it down in the front of your new notebook so you don’t forget.

You’re twenty-seven when you begin selling your art. Not just to family friends but to strangers online. It’s more than ceramics. It’s water colors and graphic logos and acrylic pours. It’s time and attention and frustration and wonder. Aunt Marie’s money helps you afford your own kiln and gets your business off the ground. You regularly send her pictures of what you make, offering her first dibs. She only requests the photos and daily texts from you. "Other people deserve your talent in their homes," she writes. You send her a ceramic woman with no breasts. It becomes her prized possession.

You’re thirty and you can’t believe it. You’ve reached this birthday and Aunt Marie has reached it with you. You celebrate with a layer cake that sinks when you slice it and although Aunt Marie has no appetite, she compliments the rainbow sprinkles your friend Jessie added on last minute. Everyone is in motion in your apartment, singing and dancing and peering at the things you’ve made around the room. When Aunt Marie dies two months later, you will hang on to the sight of her hands, pale and lovely as an orchid, holding your own. The way you squeezed your eyes shut in front of the candles and were lucky enough to wish for what you already had.