When her mother decides to move to a retirement community, Daniela steps up to help her declutter her home of twenty-six years and put it on the market. But her motives aren’t purely altruistic. Daniela has always struggled to understand her mother and their difficult relationship—the vexing misunderstandings and the emotional volatility—and she sees their downsizing project as an opportunity to find answers.

While they navigate myriad tasks, Daniela blends her observations with memories, online research, and family history to decipher her mother’s story. Her investigative lens touches on the psychology of emotions, the complexity of interpersonal communication, and the challenge of living with neurodiversity, and spans settings from early 1900s West Prussia to West Germany and Bangladesh to contemporary Southern and Northern California.