2004-12-07 - 5:41 a.m.
My family used to have all these ugly wooden ornaments depicting bears, elves, little people performing wintery tasks. Garish colors and creepy smiles on their little wooden faces. One in particular freaked us out, a little wooden man skiing, complete with a little yarn ski cap. At some point we developed a phobia about him, saying he had fallen in the toilet (although it was not the ski-man, it was a wooden mouse in a frilly dress that my mother threw away after the toilet incident). (These things get confusing, of course.)
A few years ago, my brother and I rediscovered the wooden ski-man, and started hiding him in each other's rooms. I'd come to bed and find him creepily staring up at me from my pillow with those beady painted eyes, then place him in one of my brother's socks, then find him hanging from my ceiling fan, etc. We never said much about it, just kept hiding him. A strange sort of sibling hilarity.
So I'm all moved in. New town, new home, new job. New faces everywhere. Stacks and stacks of manuals to learn at work, cases to take on. Can't figure out which one is my mailbox. Keeping a street map in my car to avoid getting hopelessly lost, to avoid ending up on the ferry.
Sunday was move-in day. After my family left me with some bags of groceries and stacks of my unpacked belongings, I threw myself into arranging and cleaning. The busier I was, the less I'd notice the quiet, perhaps. By evening, I'd completely unpacked and arranged everything in this new apartment. I was exhausted, but still lonely, couldn't shake the feeling of strangeness. I shuffled into the kitchen to make some ramen, mmm, ramen. Opened the cabinet.
And there he was, on a stack of plates. The creepy wooden ski-man, staring at me, smiling with the same red-paint smile. Missing a hand, a ski and an eyebrow, but cheerfully being his same eerie self.
For a few minutes, I felt completely okay.
The next few weeks are going to be hard. I'm glad for the people who care about me. And I'm super fucking excited about it all, really.
Perhaps my brother should receive the ski-man in the mail.
