I don’t really remember how it started, but it began slowly until one day I found myself with a basement filled with dozens and dozens of orchids and the accompanying grow lights and watering mechanisms and such. And the first Thursday of the month, I would find myself at the local orchid club meetings, accompanying my son, who was by a long shot, the only person there not old enough to drive a car.

Two years ago, my son went off to college, but the orchids stayed here. I’ve only killed about 10 or maybe 14 or 15 or, well, it really doesn’t matter. There’s still a lot here …and my son seemed to think there needed to be more…

So this summer, while working in Bangkok, he decided he’d apply for a permit from the USDA to bring home orchids. “It’s really easy,” he told me. “They just send the permit and I get them inspected and bring them home.” Little did we know...

The last thing I needed was more of his orchids (have you priced orchid sitters lately?), but I was secretly excited. I’d been through orchid markets in Asia many times and enviously eyed species that here would be $100+ per plant and there were $5-10. I maybe suggested a species or two he might want to pick up.

The permit arrived quickly and I faxed it off to him. It was permission to go on a shopping spree and that he did.

“I went to an orchid farm today... thousands of plants all hanging in baskets with no bark. Must be so easy to grow here since they don't have to repot the plants and deal with bark. I bought various species that in the US species cost a ton if you can even find them.”

The day before he left for home, he went to a university near his lab to get two other documents required by the permit - a phytosanitary certificate and another that said the plants weren’t harvested from the wild. He carefully packed them in a box and checked them with Thai Air.

At 9 p.m. last Friday I got a text that he’d landed at LAX. He’d flown home with a friend and was waiting for her to get through immigration before he went to ag. His friend was traveling home to Brazil before returning to school in the US. She told the officer she was transiting, but he saw the student visa in her passport and decided that didn’t mesh even though she had the onward ticket to Brazil. It was off to the little interrogation room, where it became clear that if she said she was in the U.S. to go to school and wasn’t transiting she could leave. So that's what she did and they let her go. Now, I'm wondering what they would have done with her anyway ...send her back to Brazil, which is exactly where she was going? Made no sense.

Anyway, my son was waiting for her and that took about an hour. Then he, for reasons I don't quite understand, gave her his cellphone while he went to ag. And he never came out. At least that’s what I learned when I called his phone and found out it was on its way to Brazil.

So three hours after he’d landed, he'd not come out of ag and customs. This didn't seem good. I was thinking lots of weird stuff actually. I know he’s a good kid, but don’t all parents say that about their kids? And I don’t exactly have warm fuzzy feelings for customs or ag.

I called all over. Eventually, LAX PD gave me a number for customs. Just as customs was telling me they weren't holding anyone, the other phone rang and it was my son. Mini-crisis over. Turned out no one in ag knew what to do with the permit because it was late and the knowledgeable ones had apparently left, so he spent 1.5 hours there while they read through binders. He filled out more paperwork and they held the orchids for inspection, presumably on Monday.

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