By: Marlene Oxender
Montpelier, Ohio
You know you’re loved when you wake up in the morning to find your house has been decorated. Sometimes it’s the landscape of the yard where friends have placed a pink flamingo or two.
Or the decoration of tree branches with toilet paper. I wonder who came up with the idea of throwing toilet paper rolls in the air with the goal of making them drape from high branches to the grass below.
Most of us have stories to tell from our teenage years when we took part in decorating our friends’ yards. It was a way of letting them know how much they were loved. How worthy they were of our time and effort.
It was also a way of letting them know their guard dog lost all sense of security duties when their friends showed up at midnight to play in the yard.
The goal was to get the trees decorated and not get caught. I remember coming up with an alibi that all members of the group were to know and stick with.
I’ll have to look for the edition of The Edgerton Earth newspaper in which my friend’s home made the news. The article included a photo of the front yard along with a short paragraph letting readers know what happened: A house had been toilet papered.
Thankfully it was a light-hearted news story, and everyone knew it was friends who had decorated the yard despite a trained dog that was supposed to have stood guard.
When my grandchildren were home for a weekend in November, they took the opportunity to decorate the interior of our home with tiny glass ducks. They stayed up late on a Friday night and placed little ducks everywhere.
In the morning, it took a while before my husband and I noticed a duck. Then another. Then we found ducks everywhere: on shelves, in cupboards, on frames, and on trim molding. Open a drawer – find a duck.
I’m sure my grandchildren will always remember the evening they’d spent together hiding colorful little ducks in plain sight. In the morning they told me they thought they’d been caught when I’d gotten out of bed for a drink of water.
I told them I had noticed every light in the house was on, and they were up and about in three different rooms. But I hadn’t suspected a thing, gotten some water, and gone back to bed.
At the end of the weekend when they left to go home, they knew we’d not yet found a little Jesus figurine they’d hidden in plain sight. It took a week for me to notice Jesus standing on a model ship on a shelf in our living room.
There He was on the stern of the ship – looking back at me. I took a picture and forwarded it to my grandson Toby, letting him know I’d found Jesus.
My father-in-law Leo had put the model ship together many years ago, and it has always been displayed on a wooden shelf he and his father Alva had made.
Leo had spent his military days working on a hospital ship, having crossed the Pacific 17 times during his five years of service. I remember Leo telling me that seasickness was an issue, and many men put in a request for an assignment on land.
But Leo had decided a hospital ship was a safe place to stay until the war was over, so he remained in his role as a cook on the USS Acadia.
When Leo put the model ship together, it was a conversation piece that helped him tell his story. And now his family has more questions: How old was Grandpa when he joined the military and what year did he get to come home? Why did the Army give him the duties of a cook upon a hospital ship? If he’d written his story, what would we read?
The USS Acadia was originally launched in 1932 as a civilian passenger ship. It was converted to a hospital ship in 1943 and served mainly in the Pacific Theater functioning as a floating hospital.
It also anchored in key bases and served as a stable medical center for ongoing operations. Although Leo was assigned to the USS Acadia, the model ship he’d put together was the USS Haven.
When my grandchildren returned to our home over the Christmas holidays, they asked how many ducks we’d found. Since we’d been enjoying them right where they were, we hadn’t collected them.
We were then given the assignment of gathering the ducks so they would know how many are left to be found. The count now stands at 36. They’re telling me there are 64 yet to find.
As for the little Jesus figurine, He’ll remain in his spot on the shelf that Great-Grandpa Leo and Great-Great-Grandpa Alva had put together. He’ll forever be a reminder of the love passed down from those who came before us, and the love we’ll continue to share with generations to come.
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Marlene Oxender is a writer, speaker, and author. She writes about growing up in the small town of Edgerton, her ten siblings, the memorabilia in her parents’ estate, and her late younger brother, Stevie Kimpel, who was born with Down syndrome. Her three published books, Picket Fences, Stevie, and “Grandma, You Already Am Old!” are available on Amazon. Marlene can be reached at mpoxender@gmail.com