December 14, 2001 - 2:03 p.m.
It's so nice to find something you'd resigned to losing forever.
My family has a tradition, going back to when I was about 4, of giving a tree ornament to each of the children every year at Christmas. It began with my grandparents when they found a wooden ornament of my favorite thing when I was 4 - a train.
Some kids like horses, some like dolls. I had it bad for trains. My mother spent many hours driving me around Chesterfield County looking for them. My grandparents bought me an electric train set a year or two before the manufacturer's age rating on the box stated I ought to have it. So when they found a tree ornament shaped into a steam engine, they bought it for me. Naturally, they had to find something for my sister too. (The cardinal rule of siblings - get two of everything.) And it occurred to them that giving us each a tree ornament every year would mean we would have a nice box of them to decorate our own trees when we were grown.
It's been a slow week decorating the tree. We have an artificial one and spent part of last weekend putting it together. After the lights are on it, the job of decorating goes over to me and I left Sunday for my parents' house. Zack likes to get into the extra lights and garland and the box of glass and fragile ornaments that aren't going up this year (or for a few years to come), so I decorate when he's sleeping.
And sometime yesterday I noticed that my wooden train wasn't in the box.
Of all the ornaments to lose - that one I'd trade a box of the rest to keep. It doesn't have any packaging, so I've kept in it a ziplock bag, lose with the rest of them. There are handholds on the side of the box, so it's possible it could have fallen out -maybe sometime over the move. Could it still be in the attic of our old house? Damn, why did that one have to go missing? Why couldn't I have lost the partridge in the pear tree that I never much liked anyway. Come to think of it --- where's the partridge in the pear tree? Damn!
That there's a second one missing does make me feel a little better, though. Now it's not a simple accident. It's a conspiracy. There's a logical reason behind it. Maybe.
So this morning I sat down and careful picked though the boxes of ornaments. Yes, I should have done this yesterday, but I am kind of short on time. Remember the toddler and the garland? OK. And, inside a nondescript blue box lay the train and the partridge. The ziplock baggies must have given out last year.
Maybe I ought to start cataloging these things. Anyone know the dewey decimal for a partridge?
