Mermaids

I have loved mermaids so long in my life I can’t even remember learning what they were.  I only remember loving them.  My hometown, Sandpoint, Idaho, capitalizes on its winter weather every year in January to put on a Winter Carnival.  Part of the festivities is a snow sculpture contest and the artists and amateurs alike come out to compete.  Each year has a theme, and in the winter of 1981 or 1982 had the theme of mermaids. 

I remember being in Dad’s truck as he drove Mom and me and my brother Randy around to see all the sculptures.  Some mermaids slid down waterfalls in front of sporting good stores.  Some mermaids swam with dolphins near the grocery market.  There were mermaids with long hair, and mermaids with shells held to their ears, and they were all gleaming white in the winter sunlight. 

Once, another time, Dad revealed one of his coffee tins of childhood treasures.  Of course it was all junk, but he had four cocktail mermaids—you know the kind, those plastic mermaids whose arms link over the rim of a cocktail glass while their fins serve as skewers for fruit or olives.  I remember the thrill I had when I realized what they were.  Dad gave them to me, and Mom gave me a little match box she lined with cotton to serve as their mermaid bed.  There was a pinkish one, a red one, an orange one, and a green one.  I loved the pinkish one the best. 

One day we were fishing, the whole family.  Mom and Grandma were kind enough to fill up Grandpa’s thermos cap with water, and I put rocks in it to.  This became the pool for my mermaids to swim in while we fished.  Grandpa came along, saw that his thermos cap was full of rocks and water and cast the whole thing into the slough, mermaids and all.  I cried out for my friends and sobbed and sobbed. Grandpa felt pretty badly, and Grandma promised me there was a mermaid she would give me at her house.  This mermaid was a glass bottle with a metallic crown for a lid.  She could be filled with water Mom tinted with food dye and I usually made her pink. 

I used to use an afghan my Great Grandma owned to wrap tightly around my legs which had a lovely zigzag pattern that reminded me of scales.  This served as my mermaid tail for many under the sea adventures in my Grandma’s living room.  And when I discovered the story of “The Little Mermaid,” it was like a revelation to me.  It may go without saying, but my first tattoo was of a mermaid.  I drew her cupping her hands to receive a bubble with her blonde hair caught in watery currents.  I will always be a mermaid.