Purple Hippopotamus

I pulled out the decorations this week and I saw it. The hippopotamus ornament. It's made of hot pink, stuffed felt with a wreath of holly around its neck. The hippo smiles, head up and eyes closed. I held the ornament up by its string and remembered Grandma.
Grandma was a hippo collector, of purple hippos in particular, if you could find them. But as most collectors will tell you, they rarely add to their collection themselves. One only needs to tell someone that they collect something and they will continue to be gifted with that thing until their dying day! That was how Grandma's hippo collection was built, on the gifts of family and friends and just about any person who knew that she loved hippos. There were dozens of hippo stuffed animals covering her bed, dancing hippo magnets on her fridge, and a purple, reclining hippo soap dish next to the tub. Hundreds of hippos scattered through out the house.
When the Alzeimers first started to take her, she started to separate things into boxes. She created a box for everyone in the family; her 8 children and each of their spouses , 10 grandchildren, and dozens of her friends. Even the hippos went into boxes, the collection divided up. The Alzeimers took her slowly at first, then suddenly it accelerated one summer month and she was gone.
A few weeks later, my grandpa came over to deliver our boxes. Each box was labeled with my grandmother's beautiful script, one for each of us. Inside my box, among other treasures, were the dancing hippo magnets and the pink hippo ornament. The ornament will hang on my tree this year, along with other ornaments that my Grandma had given me through the years; Clara from the Nutcracker and the collection of flocked teddy bears. And I will think about you Grandma and how you used to knit blankets and lopsided sweaters for the entire family every year. And how you would so carefully unwrap your Christmas presents, never tearing the paper and folding it up in a square to save for later. And how you would hold our handmade gifts as if they were the most precious things in the world. I miss you Grandma, but seeing your hippo on the tree helps me to remember.
"I want a hippopotamus for Christmas, only a hippopotamus will do..."