12/14/24

And so today’s moment of happiness despite the news.

Michael loved Christmas. His birthday is two days afterwards, and he liked to grumble that his big day was pushed aside by an upstart from Bethlehem. But even with that upstart, he enjoyed the holiday to the fullest.

When we first moved in together, he arrived with boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations. He had an entire Christmas village. One of his favorite ornaments was a spatula, given to him by a nephew. He had Rocky and Bullwinkle ornaments, Lone Ranger ornaments, Dudley Do-Right ornaments, Monopoly ornaments, ornaments that looked like old time radios, ornaments, ornaments, ornaments. For the first couple years of our combined lives together, you could barely see the tree for the ornaments, when ours were blended. As time went by though, more of the tree was devoted to family ornaments, and Michael’s village and some ornaments stayed in the storeroom. We downsized to a smaller tree as well, and there just wasn’t room.

Not the spatula, though. It always made it on the tree.

This year, all of Michael’s Christmas stuff is in the storeroom, which is off-site since we don’t have a basement. My Christmas stuff, and our Christmas stuff, is there too. I just couldn’t stand to go there and start digging through.

As I wrote before, we’re making do with a new little ceramic Christmas tree, a wooden nativity set I found at St. Vinnie’s, and two plastic lit-up cone-shaped trees from Walgreens, set around the urn.

But then yesterday, something caught my eye as I walked through the kitchen.

Michael also loved little rubber duckies. He kept bringing them home, though he also had some on his desk at work. . On the rim of my bathtub, there is a duckie that looks like an orange cat, and a duckie that looks similar to Ursula. Michael had duckies that looked like vampires, Edgar Allen Poe, cows, and well, anything that wasn’t a duckie.

There was also a Christmas duckie that had reindeer antlers on its head. And yesterday, I found it sitting on the electric socket that is wired into one of the beams that goes on either side of our island, up to the ceiling.

No, it didn’t appear there by a Christmas miracle. It appeared there because somehow, over the last couple years, Michael just kept “forgetting” to put it with the Christmas stuff to take back to the storeroom. Which means, of course, that he didn’t want to put the reindeer duckie away.

I’d forgotten all about it. But there it was. And in the middle of the afternoon, I stopped dead, gasped, and then laughed out loud.

Duckies. For God’s sake.

Every time I’ve walked through the kitchen since, I’ve looked at that duckie and either laughed or at least smiled.

And then today, I moved it. It’s where it belongs, with the person who loved it most.

There is now a reindeer duckie sitting on the top of Michael’s urn.

And I think it may just stay there. I won’t have the heart to bring it to the storeroom, or to put it back on the electric socket. It would make Michael happy.

And it’s made me happy.

So far, no one else has noticed the reindeer rubber duckie on the urn. How long do you suppose this will take?

It’s a secret, that I’m sharing with Michael. We always loved having secrets.

(Michael also had a disembodied rubber hand that made an appearance in a variety of places at Halloween. Whoever found it had to hide it again. This Halloween, it stayed tucked away. But I do believe it will come back when it’s Halloween again.)

And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.