Mrs Karminski’s Ornaments.

When you clean houses you get to see the strangest ornaments,
Some collections are a defence and a wall of armaments,
Others represent a lifetime of memories and recollections,
A wonderful improvement on memory’s imperfections.
Perhaps the strangest objects were on Mrs Karminski’s shelves.
She had roaring lions, beautiful birds and wizards and elves.

She once sat me down and explained what some of them meant to her.

“Well let’s see, This Lioness was given to me by my husband,George
It must have been around 1957.We were just married,I was
only 17.I told him I was pregnant but that he didn’t have to worry
I was going to take care of it.
I knew that Mrs Comody would get rid of the baby before it
was too late. Abortion was illegal in those days and I had
to go all alone. George didn’t like that sort of thing.
George left a few months after that.
 Mrs Comody must have made a mess of it because I wasn’t able
to have any children .
The lioness was for bravery I guess.

Mrs Karminski started to cry.

“Sorry about that I guess I shouldn’t have started with that one.
Well this next one is a Heron. That is a water bird. They use their
pointy beck to catch fish.
I won it in a Fair Ground in Linton. I was dating Sidney and we had
to throw coconuts at some tin cans. I managed to knock
them all over in one throw. The prize was this bird.
I really loved Sidney. Oh he was tall and handsome and rich,
but the bastard was married.
One day I opened my front door and this crazy women
threw chicken’s blood all over me. Ruined a perfectly
good white dress I had on. I found out later that it
was Sidney’s wife. I never heard from him again.
The Heron reminds me of tolerating the unfaithful.

“Well this last ornament is a little Red panda. I was given this one
on my 30^th birthday by my best black girlfriend Cheryl. She was a
wonderful friend. We loved each other very much. Cheryl
was bashed to death by some KKK men because she used a
White only tap in the park.
Red Panda’s are solitary bears. They choose to live life alone.
I have done that myself.
The Red Panda is for Solitude.
I guess that’s my life: Bravery, Tolerance and Solitude.

Not a bad way to live, I thought.