Why a Duck?

While watching a documentary about "The Brat Pack", I was stopped mid-scene by a glimpse of my past, sitting on a shelf in the Malibu kitchen of Emilio Estevez. There they were: a collection of nesting duck-shaped measuring cups. A surge of unpleasant chemicals (sneaky adrenaline and her evil sister cortisol, no doubt) surged through my body and I said out loud, to no one in particular as I was alone: "Those are MY Ducks!"

My immediate assumption was that those ducks were obtained by Mr. Estevez at the end of a long, strange highway of exchanges, beginning with my late X husband, who, during the madness of his addiction in 1991, sold off all our family treasures to buy drugs. Among many valuable items we'd collected over the years, there were whimsical reminders of our aspirations of bucolic bliss, which we never actually obtained. A rooster painting, a duck ring fruit bowl, cow platters, ceramic barnyard animals (along with some ceramic and wooden African wildlife, just to keep it balanced between domesticated and wild), and of course the duck (some say geese) measuring cups. All gone, gone with the winds stirred up by the dragon he was chasing until the end.

In that "Those are MY Ducks!" moment, so triggered was I at the sight of a household item of old, I could only assume Emilio Estevez somehow had MY ducks. As if they were the only ones ever made in the whole, wide world.

I still don't know, and probably never will, what happened to all our "stuff" my Dead X pawned and sold to feed his Jones. Maybe some of it ended up in a Malibu garage sale - or maybe the manufacturers of this item made MANY of them, and it just happens the Estevez family had a set. All I know is I had to pause the movie at that very moment, mid-scene, and Google Search for "Vintage Ceramic Nesting Duck Measuring Cups". And indeed I found them - many of them - for sale on sites like Esty and Ebay. 

Before I could draw breath, I bought a set.

From the initial siting on the video to search and purchase? Less than 2 minutes. Maybe less than 1 minute! 

I had not realized until that moment how indignant I still am at having lost literally everything in that marriage - except my four children, thank G*d. I told myself for years - nay, decades! - that none of the material losses mattered (and ultimately they don't!), but the furious speed at which I replaced (took back?) what was mine, after not thinking of these items for at least 30 years, astonished me. Maybe I'm a little more resentful than I thought I was, after all this time!