The house I grew up in had three bathrooms: a master bathroom, the “blue bathroom”, and a bathroom downstairs in the family room. Now, since three people (me and my parents) were the only people in the house, the math should be easy there, right? My parents would use the master bath while I used the Blue bathroom which sat, conveniently enough, right across from my bedroom. But things in the Grinaldi house are never so simple. The Blue Bathroom was for the exclusive use of guests. The rest of the family was never to use the Blue Bathroom. Ever. Not even at 2 in the morning. Even then, I would have to walk through my parents bedroom, trying not to wake them while they slept (for fear of a repeat of the “cat burglar incident” in which my mother, confusing a 9 year old me for the notorious “Mill Creek Cat Burglar” began screaming like a murdered sheep while somehow jumping up and down while laying horizontally on the bed until my father, apparently not convinced by my pre-pubescent voice in the dark, tapped me on the head to ensure it was, in fact, his son and somehow shut my mother up.) No, the Blue Bathroom was for guests. Never mind that the only guests we ever had were my grandparents and about three other people on Christmas Eve. Never mind that the blue bathroom had a perfectly serviceable bathtub/shower combo which would have alleviated the morning traffic jam which required my father and I to wake up an hour to ninety minutes before we actually had to in order to accommodate my Mother. And never mind that the famous Blue Bathroom was, all in all, rather tacky, with pussy willow wallpaper and egregiously brown tile.

Why, you may ask, was my Mother so fiercely protective of this bathroom, in all it’s Blueness? Was it because I had accidentally set fire to the bathmat one Mother’s Day when I was trying to warm up a Kleenex over a candle flame. (I was four, and I immediately did the right thing, screaming “Call 911,” as I had been instructed by Valerie, my pre-school teacher. And now I heat Kleenex in the microwave lie a civilized person.) No. Was it because we were always having surprise visits by heads of state who, if they saw an exposed conditioner bottle or basket of Q-tips would cancel an important treaty and thereby launch us into World War III? No. Though it may have been because, when I was 3, I had aim issues. They were overcome quickly, but to this day, my Mother eyes me suspiciously whenever the Rat Dog pees on the carpet.

But the focus of this article is actually the third bathroom, the one downstairs. It had no shower or tub, so it couldn’t alleviate the morning mess. And it was a long way from my bedroom, making a trek in the middle of the night a perilous one for a 9 year old boy. No, this bathroom (often referred to as the “Brown Bathroom” even though it was white and yellow and the other had the aforementioned egregiously brown tile) was reserved for two things. The first was my father. This was the place where he would do whatever it is fathers do in the bathroom for 90 minutes and a sports page. The second was knick-knacks.

The downstairs bathroom was the place where anything given to us would be placed, waiting until such time as the gifter died, moved away or finally admitted that the large blue glass ashtray with the swordfish jumping over it had, in fact, been purchased after accidentally eating the worm at the bottom of some Tijuana tequila bottle. This bathroom was where knick-knacks went to die.

The place housed a collection of shells. They were not particularly beautiful shells, in fact one looked like a claw in an H.R. Geiger drawing. There were also assorted malformed candles, irregular hand towels and a brick from my Mother’s torn down junior high which she had kept for sentimental reasons until she realized it was, in fact, a large brick.

But, most of the tchotchkes in the place were either given or made by my grandmother. My grandmother was a wonderful woman and for many years my best friend. But, she also had the broadest and most inclusive definition of the word “cute” possible. And if something was “darling”, then you had better build that ceramic duck a shrine. The centerpiece of the lavatory was one of her paintings. Now, she did not use canvas for her paintings. Instead, she chose to paint on detached cupboard doors, large wooden plates, and flat silhouettes of pears. My, how she loved the pears. This particular piece consisted of a large wooden oval and a detached frame in the style of an old saloon sign. Both were painted olive green, because, and this is just a theory, my very frugal grandfather had found olive green paint on sale and bought a shitload of it, necessitating everything she painted be olive green. On the oval was the cutest gap-toothed, straw-hat wearing elderly hillbilly you ever did see, sitting in a metal bathtub with what appeared to be a very stoned shih tzu sitting next to him in the bath. The caption, painted on the frame, read “Save Water, Bathe With a Friend”. There really is no design style, not even “eclectic white trash” which would encourage the display of this artwork. Not even Frank would find it charming. Hence, it was relegated to the downstairs bathroom, where it stayed, taunting us like some Precious Moments collectible based on the works of John Steinbeck, until my grandmother passed. Now it is replaced by a teddy bear poster. But then, the woman has a problem. Everything in that house has been replaced by a teddy bear or teddy bear-themed effluvia.

Even Janice.

Janice, whose likeness adorns the logo for this site, lived on top of the piano just outside the bathroom of knick-knack purgatory. She that there through all of my childhood, wincing while hearing me learn piano, oohing silently as she watched me me build Lego mansions, and averting her eyes as I realized that the Men’s Pro Beach Volleyball players on the only TV in the house with cable made me feel kinda funny. She was a constant. And I thought she was the ugliest thing ever carved out of wood, and I included Chuck Heston in that group.

The family room, you see, was very much like the purgatorial brown bathroom. It was the place for décor which was no longer acceptable for the living room: the silk ficus tree that never quite looked right, the old antique piano my parents had painted over with some sort of finish which was purported to “give the appearance of real wood,” a large plastic bust of Schubert my Mother had obtained as a child. (Side note. I think it’s kinda cool that she chose Schubert, rather than Beethoven or Bach. Sure, he’s not as famous, but he could still rock the hizzouse and his Ave Maria kicks J.S. Bach’s lily-white ass. It’s kinda like, when given a choice between The Beatles or The Stones, she chose The Kinks, and I’ll take Lola over Satisfaction any day.) Each of these things had a home in the family room.

But all of these knick-knacks had one thing that separated them from the “Save Water, Bather With a Friend”s. My Mother loved them. She may have known she was alone in that love, but she adored them all the same. And if one should deign to mock them, or, horror of horrors, refer to them as “tacky”, well that was a one-way ticket to Weepy City. And of everything, Janice was my Mother’s favorite.

We do not know where, exactly, she came from. I have gleaned that she is South Asian, since either my Father or Uncle Elwood brought her back from their respective tours in the Navy and Air Force. (I’m pretty sure it was my Uncle, since I was shocked to find Janice’s exact twin at his house during a visit in high school. I dubbed her Melba. I’m not sure why.) She is made of something my mother refers to as “Monkey Pod Wood”. I am not sure if there is such a thing as a Monkey Pod Tree, but I really hope there is. She is rather hefty, standing a good 2 feet tall. She has large, full, Angelina-only-wishes lips, almond eyes and skin the texture of a gold ball. Her hair sweeps dramatically over one eye and from her other ear hangs a large earring the exact size and contour of a pineapple slice. Her face gives way to a long, fluted neck decorated with a series of chokers.

She fits in no specific school or art, either primitive or contemporary, that I am aware of. In fact, I have no idea what possessed my Uncle to purchase her and lug her and Melba home on an Air Force plane. My best friend and I dubbed her Janice because she resembled a certain Muppet (the tambourine player in Dr. Teeth’s band, The Electric Mayhem.) But my Mother told me, tears in her eyes, that it hurt her feelings when we mocked Janice, because she thought she was beautiful. That was the word she used, beautiful.

Janice became symbolic of many things: my Mother’s questionable taste, obviously, and her emotional attachment to inanimate objects. Most of all, she was emblematic of the growing chasm between Mom and I. We didn’t like the same things. In fact, I was seeking out new things, new ideas while she was attached to a large wooden phallus with an earring and Veronica Lake’s hair. And when, her eyes welling with tears, she told me how much it hurt her feelings when I made fun of Janice, I realized just how fragile and human my Mother could be.

But, something changed my sophomore year of college. I was not present for it, but at some point, my Mother had an epiphany. Janice? Was ugly. She was tacky and vaguely obscene. I believe this coincided with her teddy bear collection reaching critical mass and thus relegating some of the bears to purgatorial status (strangely, all bears I had given her.) Janice was removed from the piano, as was Schubert, and replaced by a bear wearing a peach antebellum ensemble in the style of Scarlett O’Hara. My Mother called me and asked, jokingly, if I wanted her. My answer was immediate. Hell yeah, I wanted her. She was, is and always will be the kitschiest thing I had ever seen. And, as a 20-year old member of Generation X (back when we stilled called ourselves Generation X without an eye roll) I was all about the kitsch.

“But, she’s ugly,” my Mom said. “You always make fun of her.”

“I know. But I want her,” I replied.

“Okay, I’ll save her for you.” (Save her from what, I don’t know.) So, on my next trip home, I picked her up, brought her back to my dorm room and placed her atop my bookcase where she remains to this day, 4 apartments and 2 states later.

I'm not sure why exactly I have come to love Janice. It is not a pure love, like my Mother's, but a love tinged with irony and familiarity. But, I have come up with a few reasons why.

• She’s funky and unique (except for Melba, but she doesn’t have a website).
• She’s long, smooth and cylindrical, like certain other things I enjoy.
• She’s vaguely Polynesian, thus allowing me to use the word “tiki” and I love the word “tiki”.
• She's a part of my childhood, for good or bad.
• Most importantly, though, she is living proof that my Mother was wrong.

Now, when people come over and see her, looming majestically over my living room and ask, with either horror or incredulity, “What is that?” I answer simply, “That’s Janice. She was my Mom’s. I love her.”