The fern lives on the shelf by the south window.
It is considerably greener now.
I water it on Thursday mornings and sometimes stand there for a moment longer than watering requires, thinking about how strange families are. How apology can arrive late and crooked and carried by the wrong person and still be worth receiving. How forgiveness is not a door you fling open or slam permanently shut. How sometimes it is simply a boundary with something growing beside it, tended carefully, allowed to recover in better conditions than the ones it survived.
If my mother ever decides to apologize, actually apologize with the honesty and accountability that real apology requires, she knows where I live. She knows what it would take, and it is not tears and it is not pressure and it is not a child on my porch holding a pot.
Maybe that day comes. Maybe it does not.
