My friend gave me a prayer plant last January.

She’d propagated it from a cutting, and I was touched. It was adorable, just a few inches high, with four healthy leaves. I walked the few blocks home, hopeful but nervous, because I am not good with plants. Explain it to me like I don’t even know what a plant is, I said. She did. I placed it in what I thought was the right light. My family admired its diurnal movements. Each morning, it lowered its leaves. Each night, it raised them.

Within days, the leaves began to turn yellow and wither. I moved my new plant all over the place and texted my friend photos, frantically seeking advice. Pick a spot and leave it there, she said. Keep the soil moist. I think it will be okay. This happens sometimes. New growth pushed its way up the middle, a leaf furled so tightly it resembled a blade of grass. As it grew, one of the yellow leaves gave up the ghost, turning brown and drying to a husk. I clipped it off, worried.

The new leaf opened, looking considerably less hearty than its predecessor. I watched as this zero-sum game played out three more times. The pace was excruciating, each episode taking a couple of months. I removed the dead leaves and tracked the progress closely, letting up only when I trusted that the new leaves were holding their own.I kept the soil moist and enjoyed the plant’s presence in my living room, but I can’t say exactly when it broke even, growing a fifth leaf without sacrificing an earlier one.

Now it also has a shoot pushing up from the middle, the tallest of any yet. It could spend a month on the unfurling, in that languorous way it has. The older leaves have developed their colors, a deep green set against a paler shade, with swooping lines of magenta. The younger leaves are bright, with darker splotches emerging in awkward shapes that strike me as adolescent.

Throughout this tortuous year, I’ve regularly updated my friend about the plant’s progress, sending her photos, joking about my urge to make it a metaphor, admitting that I’ve imbued it with way too much meaning. I’ve never felt this way about plant. I think it might be love, with a dash of idolatry.

I thought it would be fun to celebrate the plantiversary with my friend, so I scrolled through our texting chain of the past year, which forms a hilarious (to us), wide ranging, and fragmented record of some things about 2020. I loaded at least a dozen pages before I found the date she entrusted the plant to me: January 20, 2020. Today is January 20, 2021. I am nervous but hopeful.