Jellyfish

Twelve or thirteen years ago we hosted a house party, as we like to do. My daughter was very young at the time, and wanted to do something to decorate for the party. She found a small brown paper bag and scribbled a jellyfish on it. She then asked me to "hang it up" in front of the door. I found some double-sided tape and affixed the bag to the ceiling of our living room, just inside our front door.

No one at the party noticed. My daughter got distracted and didn't remind us to mention it. That paper bag has remained in place ever since.

I have friends and neighbors who have walked through our front door dozens, if not hundreds, of times over the last decade and they've never noticed! At a holiday party late last year I casually mentioned "the jellyfish by the front door" and a friend looked at me like I'd grown a third arm. I walked him over to the door and told him to look up. His eyes bulged out of his head, and he absolutely didn't believe me that that had been there every single time he'd come to our house.

Oddly, we've never named this jellyfish. We rarely talk about it as a family, but we all know it's there. I suspect the family finds it as endearing and as special a secret for each of them as it is for me.

I have every intention of leaving it there until it comes down on its own. I'm actually still amazed that the tape is holding, all these years later.