There was a horrible watercolor that hung in our bathroom for years.

If we’d had a basement, maybe I could have hung it down there; we DID have a garage but, well I really couldn’t do that.
I didn’t buy it, my husband did and well how do I hang something in the garage that he just bought?
So, I found a place for it…the small bathroom in the entry…with the door always shut.
The hanging piece-of-work was purchased one day while my husband and I were walking some of the back streets of San Francisco.

We noticed red arrows pointing down a passage-way between two buildings.

It was too interesting looking to ignore so we wandered down the path.

The red brick wall of one building was covered with shiny, almost waxed-looking English Ivy and the other, full of blooming rainbow colored flowers. The sidewalk was a path created from rocks of different sizes, shapes and colors.
Huge clusters of Cala Lilies were growing all along the path and at the end, it led us to a small group of Alder trees.
The fragrance of the trees was like the aroma of a sweet incense and their outstretched limbs were holding baskets of beautiful overflowing, hanging flowers.

Just past the trees was an opening and with a few steps we found ourselves standing in an outdoor art show of framed water colors.
It was a courtyard thick with trees, plants and flowers all twinkling with little decorative lights and paintings hanging everywhere.

The artist was back there, she was painting.

She heard us, looked up for a moment and then called out, “come on in.”

She was a delight to behold; a San Francisco treat, probably an old hippie…an original.

The twinkling lights reflected into her deep dark eyes and made them look almost unreal. Her smile was alive and happy and gave the whole area a friendly feel.
Her long dark hair was half secured with a huge jewel-studded comb and the other half hung down over her shoulder in multiple colored strands.
She wore a small beanie on the long-hair side of her head.
No make-up on her lovely, very peaceful looking face but a few piercings on her nose and near her eyes and OUCH!
Rings on her fingers, bracelets dangling and bells on her barefoot toes.
Her jeans and shirt were loaded with all the colors of the paintings that were on display.

We walked around and admired her work and before long, my husband, the art appreciator, and the artist were involved in conversation.

I decided to just wander around back there and enjoy the magical surroundings.

After maybe ten minutes it felt like time to move on so I headed toward the two still talking.
There was a brown-paper wrapped something secured under my husbands arm which hadn’t been there when we entered this little hidden garden of color.
A purchase I presumed.
I hadn’t seen anything that attracted me enough to want to bring it home but as I said, I didn’t have the artistic eye.

I was a little bit curious but not enough to unwrap it till we got home.

Soon after we arrived home that night, we had an unveiling.
My husband had an excited smile on his face as he pulled off the brown-paper wrapping and exposed “It.”
No way was I gonna burst his happy bubble so I changed the “WHY?” in my head to the “WOW” from my mouth.
It came out, “Wow, that’s awesome.”
But, what I meant was, “Wow…. REALLY?”
A Doberman dog?
On a leash held by a very tall, wind-blown, willowy brunette?
He had a thing for Dobermans?
I’d never heard him mention Dobermans, never, not even ONCE!
And the willowy brunette?
Who was that?
NOT me!

“I like it,” he said. “I just like it, I don’t know why.” ( and neither did I!)

And it wasn’t small like something I could just put on a shelf somewhere.
It was 11 by 17 and the frame was red.

“Hang it wherever you want,” he gave me that choice.
That’s when the garage came to mind; not even the inside of the garage but the outside, way to the back where the rain hits the hardest.

“It” hung in that bathroom for five years.
I totally ignored it, never looked at that wall when I went in there.
And I waited for five years for just one person to comment about it. Nothing, ever.
Just needed one person to say they liked it and home with them it was going.
But, not even one.
Multiple times every year, I offered it to my girls…no takers.
And worse than that, they always complimented how good it looked on that wall and WE should keep it.

Where DID they get their teasin’ sense of humor from?

We had a huge garage sale when we decided it was time to move and the dog and the broad were up for grabs…cheap……make me an offer……free?
One lady stopped for a moment and looked at it.
I hurried over and told her it was a Blue Light Special and with anything she purchased the water color was hers, free.
She left…without it.

Everything sold quickly.
Well, except, you know… “It.”

My girls were visiting that week-end.
I tried hard to convince just one of them to take “It” home with them.
They wouldn’t even touch it for fear that would make it theirs.
I had told them that once, “you touch it, you own it.”

After much teasing and laughing about what to do with “It,” one of my girls had a light-bulb thought.
We had a family friend who loved Dobermans, she even owned one and she was brunette. Perfect.
We packaged “It” and sent it on it’s way.

Shortly thereafter we received the package back.
Family friend had returned it with a “Thanks but no thanks note.

That was the beginning of “It’s” garage shelf life; right next to the mouse traps, toilet plungers and Weed-be-Gone.

When my girls would stop by for a visit, always as they were leaving, I offered to put “It” in their car for them.
Sometimes I got a funny sarcastic comment about the offer and we’d laugh. Sometimes a loud NO and sometimes they just plain ignored the question.

One day while reading I ran across a great story. It was about a woman who had an old beat up big yellow shirt. It was her go-to shirt. She wore it when she cleaned house, she wore it through the nine months of her pregnancy sometimes she slept in it and she wore it when she painted the inside of the house. She loved the yellow shirt; it was her old friend.
When her daughter was moving to college, the mom secretly packed the yellow shirt in between her clothes with a great note about the story of that shirt and it’s history.

An idea hit!

I decided the daughter that teased me the most about that albatross should have it.

She and her man were going somewhere tropical.
I had her house key, you know for safety sake.

One day while they were still gone, the Doberman, the brunette and I went for a little car ride…to her house.
I had copied the story of the yellow shirt and placed it in an envelope and attached it to the red frame.
On the outside of the envelope, I wrote, “Hello There!”
I turned the key and in we went.
I introduced the dog and the woman to their new home and then slipped them in between their king-sized mattresses, way to the middle.

And that’s how “It” began.

It was maybe six months later when I found it wedged in my closet with a note attached, “Hola!”

Not a word about it did we speak. NOT A WORD, not a hint, nothing and that’s hard for either one of us to do.

“It” has been going back and forth for over 12 years now.

Family members will every once in a while ask who has it and where is it?
We ALWAYS both deny that we have it.

It’s been hidden in crawl spaces above garages, numerous closets, behind dressers and other furniture, under beds, and high on shelves lying flat.

Some of the spots have been pretty clever; high up on the wall beneath a 12 foot tapestry, stuffed inside a duvet with a quilt stored in a closet, delivered by US Mail.

Some of the spots have been pretty funny.
One time she and her husband were spending the night because well, we DO drink but we DON’T drink and drive.
She had “It.”
She had a plan. She waited for us all to go to bed and then taped “It” underneath the big squared coffee table. And off to bed she smugly went.

Shortly after that I came out into the living room to check on something, I noticed “It” lying on the floor, smack under the middle of my coffee table.

Hmm? She hid it on the floor? Under the coffee table?
Then I saw all the tape around it.
It hadn’t stuck and had fallen from it’s hiding spot.
So, I picked “It” up and shoved it under my bed.

What I didn’t know about this story is shortly after I’d been up walking around, she got up to just check and make sure all was good. She told me later that when she felt under the coffee table and it was gone, she freaked. She had just put it up there maybe an hour before and now it was gone. How could that happen? Where did it go?

We never really know who has “It.”

Well, I think my daughter snoops every now and then; comes over when we aren’t home and double checks that it’s where she last hid it.

When it’s gone…she knows “It” is back at her house somewhere.

She’s also impatient.
She hid “It” real well once and we didn’t find it for months and months.
It drove her crazy every time she was able to check and it was STILL where she’d left it.
So she decided to make it a bit easier for us and hung it smack on the wall of our guest room.
Right out there in the open.
Months went by.
We never noticed.
Honest!
She finally started leaving verbal cues and eventually we found it.

Once she caught me looking behind her little pie cabinet thing in her kitchen to make sure it was still there.
It was, but not for long.
BUSTED!

We always date and name when and where we found it and then add a note of our own.

The longest it was ever hidden without being found was a year and a half.

And now, I suppose you’re wondering who has “It.”

All I can tell you is…..not me!