My grandma's duck collection
The big square white house where my grandmother was born is where she lived, and it is also where we would spend most of each summer as kids, playing with our siblings, and sometimes, cousins. It's always been one of my favorite places in the world, because of my grandparents, maybe also because of the absence of pollution and the countryside. Maybe also because of the ducks.
When you enter the first room, the first thing you notice is the very peculiar orange hexagonal kitchen tiles, that for some reason make you feel very warm. Facing the cooking space, there is a big clock on the right wall, telling you the precise time (which proves very useful especially since my grandpa has no telephone). On the left, there would be flowers sitting on a little window. In the middle of the kitchen, a round table with four chairs takes up most of the space, covered with a clean tablecloth ; a clear blue fabric printed with sunflowers. If you look very closely at the fabric, you would notice that it has two small holes in it, a discreet reminder of the time my grandfather used to smoke.
When you enter the next room on the left, there is one second thing you inevitably notice : ducks. Just a little below the small rectangular windows there is the big main shelf, with maybe a hundred ducks are sitting here. You could think, strange, why has a 91 year old lady been collecting ducks all of her life? Not at all. In fact the ducks sit here as if they were meant to be. They come from all over the world because whenever people see ducks in another country, in a flea market, anywhere, they would think of her and they'd buy it and bring it back for her collection. I remember being amazed by it every time and her showing me this or this duck that had been brought back by this friend from here or there. She is very proud of it. She probably has more than 200 ducks now. It's a very motley crew, but they are all very unique and carefully crafted, and somehow not even one of them is made of plastic. There is some small and medium glass colorful ducks, enormous ducks, lacquered-wood ducks, jewlery-box ducks that can open and contain secrets in their belly, cold ceramic ducks. There is even an incense-holder clay duck from Nepal. They are all shapes and sizes, and amongst them there is no favorite. They all sit together, looking very classy and happy and unique, on their special duck shelf.
With time, the ducks started to get a bit cosy, so my grandfather decided to craft them some more shelves. They are now sitting on at least four different shelves of the same wall, taking up more and more space in the room. He is always speaks of crafting more shelves for future ducks. It's a work in progress, it's always been. Since I remember this house, my grandma has always had this very peculiar object collection. It always seemed like an evidence to me, that she loved ducks, even though I never thought to ask her why, or when she started. Although even if I never asked, I am ready to bet than some of them are older than me.
It's almost funny how it's always been a very obvious, and at the same time, a very serious thing. I love that a duck collection is serious. But isn't every collection? There is something peculiar yet strangely reassuring in people collecting things. Even if you are not materialistic sometimes you are forced to admire someone's determination to accumulate a certain kind of objects for no special reason. It is fantastic that what other call useless can have a special meaning to someone, just because one day you decide it. In this precise case, I love that it's always been so obvious that my grandma's ducks were important, and that my grandpa has been taking care of them ever since.
Looking back on their couple and thinking about the shelves and the ducks, I notice that I used to overlook certain things he would do for her. Now that she's in the hospital, I see how he complains not about her but about her absence, and how he refers to her as "my wife". I see that he makes the road every day to see her even though he can barely see and that he brings her an apple from their orchard and peels it for her, because the apples from the hospital "are so hard! You could break your teeth on them".
Looking back at them, I see it now, it's always been the tiny bits of love that meant the most; It's always been about the ducks.