WAG, part 12

“WAG #12: Memory Lane” Thanks to Lulu for the topic idea! For this week, describe something by memory. It can be a place, a person, whatever you like. Include as much detail as you can as well as your impressions. If possible, then go and see this thing, and also describe how your memory of it was different from the current reality. What had you left out? It also might be interesting to include how your memory of it is different from someone else’s! No limits on this one! No rules to break!

The cookie jar is smooth to the touch and glistens with clear glaze. It is tan and brown and about eighteen inches long. The jar is the shape of a cow. The head has horns and a cheery smile. The spine is bony, a Jersey cow, I think, with a long tail stuck forever in a half swish. The cow is resting on the ground, its legs stuck safely under it. The lid to the jar is a striped tabby cat with long whiskers also tan and brown, but the cat grins like the cat in "Alice in Wonderland." Its tongue wiping the remains for milk off its face. A whimsy of a jar made in the 1960s. When people still laughed at the idea of squirting cow's milk from the utter and letting the cat lick it up. The jar is valuable now, most of the cats having been knocked off the cow's back. I like it because my Great-Aunt gave it to me. She lives on a 150 year old farm and claims she had stored it in the barn.

I go downstairs and search the cookie jar collection displayed on my cabinet tops. There is the jar, just as I remember it. My fingers slide over the smooth glaze and bony back. I return the cat's smile. Happy to have such a rare piece of silly whimsy. I look around at all 25 cookie jars from owls, to rag dolls, to castles, to stoves and wonder which one I hid the keys in...

To read other wonderful WAG exercises go to Nixy Valentine's blog and click on the links. (There are also instructions so that you can join us in the fun.) cheers!