It is a pear Christmas tree ornament. I don’t remember exactly how I got it or why I think it’s connected to my mom. Like she bought it for me? Or I took it from her? Or it came with her when she moved in with me? I do know that I’m not really fond of it. I don’t like its texture. Glass with a rough kind of gold glitter covering most of the surface – it reminds me of the texture of fine-grain sandpaper. I do not like that texture. There’s green paint at the narrower end – the top I suppose – meant to be the leaf and stem. The green paint is thick and has had some texturing done to resemble the veins. As if someone took a toothpick and pulled little lines through the not quite dry paint. At the very top is a little silver tined doohickey that caps it off and has the loop that the hook goes into in order to hang it from the tree. The doohickey has a missing tine, and I am not sure if this is intentional, to remind one of the pear’s stem or if at some point it’s come off. Did it come off while it was in my possession? There’s another much paler (meant to appear faded) patch of green on the side. I can’t tell what it’s supposed to be. Another leaf? But I’ve never seen a pear with a leaf randomly along the curve of its bottom portion. There are two of them actually, two of these pear Christmas tree ornaments that I don’t like to touch. I’ve put them into a lovely glass jar. It’s ok in the jar. I don’t mind it as much in the jar. Because I don’t have to touch it. I’ve placed the jar on one of the bookcases in my living room. The bookshelf full of hardbound myths, legends, fairy tales, and lore. A couple of Hanukkah dreidels rest propped up against the jar and my old wood box that contains the Italian Renaissance tarot cards I got when I was sixteen is next to those. My bedside Torah study guide, an old King James Bible, and the Bhagavad Gita on the shelf below. Whenever I think about getting rid of the little pear ornaments, I’m too amused by the juxtaposition of all these individual contradictions that on the whole are not contradictory at all. So there they are, mostly forgotten, until the next time I go looking for an obscure bit of mythology or imaginative jumpstart; teasing my memory, but offering no answers.