Ceramic Flower Lettuce Green XL 5

In times of crisis, I've found that people tend to fixate on peculiar things. My sister, for instance, once spent an entire month learning to juggle prescription bottles during a particularly nasty divorce. But my latest obsession – a ceramic flower the size of a dinner plate – feels somehow more dignified, even if my partner disagrees. "It's called sea lettuce," I explained to him one afternoon, holding the seafoam-green monstrosity at arm's length. "The artist probably meant for it to evoke thoughts of underwater gardens or mermaid salads, but all I can think about is that time our neighbor served us actual sea lettuce in Tokyo, and you quietly fed yours to her cat." The ceramic piece came with a keyhole mount on the back, which he pointed out made it look like a jade toilet seat from behind. But there was something endearing about its largeness, its unapologetic presence. I hung it in our kitchen, right above the spot where we'd previously displayed a "Live, Laugh, Love" sign that my sister had given us ironically. "It's perfect for a nursery," I mused aloud, though we didn't have children and weren't planning on any. "You say that about everything," he replied. "Last week you said the same thing about your collection of vintage dental tools." But he was wrong about this one. The flower had transformed our kitchen from a place where we merely cooked into a space where we could pretend we were dining beneath the sea, surrounded by vegetation that would never need watering or explanations to houseguests who might question our taste.

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