France Ceramic Flower Yellow Lotus

My sister once told me that wall art decor and nursery room accessories were two different things, as if declaring this somehow made it true. I was holding a ceramic flower at the time – a yellow lotus-like thing the size of a salad plate that looked like it had been designed by someone who'd only ever seen water lilies in a cartoon. "It's modern artwork," I insisted, as if this designation would somehow elevate it from the realm of questionable taste to sophisticated decor. The wall-mounted piece had come with installation instructions that included the word "keyhole," which I initially thought was some sort of zen koan rather than a mounting mechanism. Hugh, my boyfriend, watched me try to hang it with the kind of expression usually reserved for people attempting to parallel park for the first time. "You know," he said, "most people just buy stuffed animals." But I wasn't most people, and this wasn't most flowers. It was a statement piece, though what exactly it was stating remained unclear. The ceramic bloom now hangs slightly crooked in my nephew's nursery, looking less like a lotus and more like a fried egg having an identity crisis. Sometimes I catch it in my peripheral vision and think it's judging my life choices.