Memories

This is a penguin.  I have had this little guy for a very long time!  He is kinda cute but really the wrong colors for a penguin.  I found him out in my garage when I was going through things to throw them out last weekend.  I remember when I got him, well sort of.  I don't remember how old I was but I wasn't really little.  So lets say when I was younger my dad won this little guy in one of  those claw machines.  You know the ones that you hardly ever win things out of?  Daddy wasn't one to play those things really and I don't even remember why he did this time....but out came this little guy.  He has been around for, gosh, around 20 years maybe?  I tuck him away somewhere and he reappears when I need to smile, sometimes when things are going bad he is just "found".  I think it is neat the way he appears when I sort of need him.  I was going through stuff in the garage and while I know he had been tucked away  in a container here he was just kind of sitting there with a bunch of other stuff!!  I had a bad weekend because of my medication mix up and I wasn't feeling too good.   Things have been really chaotic lately for no reason it seems.  That is normally when the penguin appears.  He makes me slow down somehow.  I see him and I smile and think, "What are you doing here?"  I give him a hug and make sure I put him somewhere safe.  I have some of Daddy's things, a flannel shirt, an old wallet, a few pictures that were in his wallet, and a quilt his mother made I think, but this little penguin evokes a different kind of feeling when I see him.  Those other things are nice and all, but they aren't stuffed, and cute, and "won" just for me by my daddy!  Now my little penguin is up on my dresser so I can look at him every day.  Who knows when he will get tucked away again to be found again just when I need him....