Kathy Murphy.
See essay below
This little ceramic frog has to be over 50 years old. I always remember him in my grandmother's bathroom holding stick matches for lighting the gas wall heater. He sat there until I was 15 when she moved to another home, and was relocated to her "show-off" cabinet with the Limoges porcelain and Murano glass. Now, 40+ years after I met him he resides on my mantle where I see him every day. When we liquidated everything in her home the only thing I asked for was this little green frog. Nobody knew I wanted him until I visited the estate auction. My uncle smuggled him out of a box lot in his pocket and pressed him into my hand before the bidding started.
Everybody has special childhood memories. Many of mine involve my Grandma Susie and the times she took me to their farm for the weekend. I remember baths in a big zinc tub on the wrap-around porch, snapping beans fresh from the garden and the cool Oklahoma plains breezes going all the way through the opened up house. That house blew away in a tornado over 20 years ago. The frog survived. I saw her this last weekend and at 94 years old she is present in body but in mind she is there only in the very instant you are talking to her. She can't remember the conversation we had 5 minutes previous. She does remember me as a child playing at the farm, and I think this little froggie does too.
