Good Thing Ida Wasn't on the Truck

So we've moved.
Or at least we've left our little house in West Virginia (several nostalgic posts about my house, marmots and neighborhood to be linked here when I can post photos).
Given that the movers had given us a range of July 1-3 for our stuff to arrive in Oklahoma, we expected that we would be in the process of moving in by now.
Alas, we found out on June 30, when we called the moving company from our new town, that our stuff isn't expected to be in Oklahoma until July 13-15. We had chosen this moving company specifically because they gave us the best range of dates that would allow us to be in Colorado with family July 5-18. If we ask them to wait until we are going to be in Oklahoma, our stuff won't arrive until the first week of August. Needless to say, we aren't happy (and don't have the ideal apparel for wearing in the mountains in Colorado), but we are working things out and, thanks to some relatives very generous with their time, have a plan.
I'm just glad Ida isn't on the truck.
Ida is one of my houseplants, apparently a green nepthytis (Syngonium podophyllum). She didn't have a name until I reluctantly gave her away last week. Until then, she was just "the indicator plant" because she would always wilt before the others and indicate water was needed. Ida had been with me for almost twelve years. She was given to a family friend in 1998 following one of many cancer treatments. That friend, who did not go by Ida, gave the plant to me to adorn my first "real" apartment, saying, "It will look better in your apartment than in my hospital room."
And the plant looked great in my apartment. The plant was a turning point with my houseplant luck (or skill). Until then I had only managed to keep alive the most simple of plants, a pothos and a sansevieria from my brother, and starting with the indicator plant, I had quite the photosynthetic menagerie. The plant lived with me in the Denver apartment after the friend died of cancer in 1999. The plant survived almost twelve years and four moves with me, including Denver to Kansas and Kansas to West Virginia. I wanted the plant to move to Oklahoma as well, but the movers wouldn't take live plants and there wasn't room in the car with The Mister, Mr Splashy Pants and Dianthus, so I gave the plant away to a West Virginia friend.
I told the WV friend the story of how special this plant is to me: how it represents a family friend who was a great woman and a great bread baker and generous even when she dying. I surprised my West Virginia friend by not having a name for such a symbolic plant. So she asked for the name of the great woman who gave her to me. I told her. It's not a good name for a plant. "What was _____'s middle name?" "_______ was her middle name. Her first name was Ida." The West Virginia friend didn't think Ida was a great plant name either, and thought better of naming a plant after a human, but "Ida" fits the plant to me.
This is all a long reminder about symbols. It's a reminder to my friend in West Virginia that if Ida the plant dies, which she inevitably will some day, it does not bode ill for her, for me, or for our friendship. It's also a reminder to me that in leaving Ida and many other plants, including the two that my brother gave me twenty years ago for my first dorm room, I am not leaving behind the good wishes with which they were given. It's also a reminder to the family and friends of the woman-who-didn't-go-by-Ida, many of whom read this blog, that her spirit persists among us and I think of her often. I'll still think of her often without the plant to remind me.
Ida the plant is symbolic only because I make her so. Ida the plant is merely a common houseplant.
Still, I'm glad Ida wasn't sneaked onto the truck to be sweltering for weeks in some storage unit as we wait for a truck, any truck, to drive our stuff to Oklahoma.