The life spite fought for

Or, how a lifetime of avoiding inconvenience led me to make room for a daisy

In Spite and other reasons to stay alive, I joked that we couldn’t die before Enrile because we should just simply refuse to let him win.

Well, he’s dead now.

And while there’s still Imelda, eventually she will die and I’ve come to the realization that we have got to find reasons to stay that don’t depend on ninety-something criminals continuing to exist.

So now I’m driving around with a daisy riding shotgun.

A questionable new passenger

I’ve been living between two houses lately.

A week here. Two weeks there. Just enough time in each place to forget where I put most things.

It’s temporary. I’m in the middle of moving, which apparently involves an astonishing number of trips, activating my sleeping Tetris skills while testing the limits of the car’s carrying capacity, and discovering just how many things one person can accumulate while insisting they don’t own that much.

The other day, I posted a video of me driving back to the old house.

The responses were not what I expected.

Nobody asked about the move. Nobody asked why my dog was side-eyeing me. I was belting out some Mariah, so that one was at least understandable.

Instead, people wanted to know why there was a potted daisy sitting in the front passenger seat.

Simple: I didn’t want it to die.

Which is interesting because I used to be very good at moving without caring about plants dying.

Some eight years ago, I could pack up my entire life and move from one apartment to another in about a day.

I had a system. Pack everything into the existing boxes, bags, and containers I had on hand, then go. Anything that didn’t fit got given away or thrown out.

I didn’t spend a lot of time asking whether something had a story. If it didn’t fit into the life I was moving into, it didn’t come with me.

It was efficient. Brutal, maybe, but efficient.

Now, I make special transportation arrangements for a daisy.

Stubborn little things

The thing is, this isn’t just any daisy.

Growing up, the front of our house was lined with them. Somewhere along the way they disappeared. Construction, I think.

Some ten or so years ago, after the house was renovated, one of our old neighbors came to visit carrying a small pot. She told us we gave her an offshoot from those original daisies years before. She’d looked after it, propagated it, and now she wanted to give one back.

This is that plant.

It’s survived for over a decade. Survived forgotten watering schedules. Survived my dog and the random stray cat trampling on it.

It’s survived my occasional inability to remember where I left my responsibilities.

We’ve had a few close calls. Once, during the summer, I stayed at the new house for two weeks and came back to find almost every leaf gone, save for one stubborn little green one hanging on by what I can only assume was pure spite.

And now it’s surviving a house move.

I wanted to take a little piece of my history with me. And if that meant chauffeuring a flower across provincial borders, then so be it.

What refuses to fit in boxes

I don’t really remember when I became someone who cared this much about what I carried with me.

Maybe it’s the house.

The old house is my childhood home. The one we’re selling. The one that’s starting to empty out. The one that used to have daisies lining the front.

You can’t pack up a childhood home in a day (I know, I tried).

There are too many things that don’t fit in boxes. Too many versions of yourself wandering around different corners of the house. Too many little things that need to get done. Too many ordinary objects suddenly demanding that you remember where they came from.

My sentimentality doesn’t usually extend to things. That’s probably why leaving them behind has always been easy.

But when something big happens (like moving out of your childhood home), I tend to place an unreasonable amount of significance on one specific thing. Something that becomes shorthand for an entire period of my life.

This time, it’s the daisy.

The deeply unglamorous business of staying

Back then, staying alive was the victory. These days, staying alive is bare minimum.

Because once you decide you’re staying, there is suddenly so much fucking upkeep.

There are medications to take and groceries to buy. Friends to connect with. Parents to spend time with. A dog that needs feeding. Laundry that, as previously established, is neverending.

There is a childhood home you have to say goodbye to and a daisy you refuse to leave behind.

This is what staying looks like now; just a life with an increasingly long list of things I give a shit about.

Spite got me here.

And here is… this.

Two houses (for now). Too many things. A dog side-eyeing my completely stellar Mariah Carey performance, and a small pot wedged carefully into the passenger seat because we may be selling the house, but I’ll be damned if I leave all of it behind.

Somewhere along the way, I built a life with enough things I give a shit about to make leaving inconvenient.

Or maybe I’ve learned that moving on and leaving everything behind are not the same thing.

I’m still figuring that out.

For now, the daisy comes with me.

It has already left this house once, been cared for somewhere else, and somehow found its way home. Now, we’re both leaving again, taking whatever pieces of the past we’ve managed to keep alive with us.

We’ve both made it this far. It feels rude to stop now.

in transit, intentionally (and less spitefully),