Astronaut on the Moon Ornament

The Astronaut on the Moon Ornament is the anchor piece among our space ornaments, a white-suited figure planted on a cratered gray disc with a gold visor and a flag furled against its own pole. The craters go into the base before it has set and are dry-brushed afterward, so the shadows collect in the low spots instead of sitting painted onto a flat face. At nearly five inches it is deliberately top-heavy and wants a sturdy branch with clear space around it, because the whole point of this figure is that it is not going anywhere. It has landed. My sister-in-law Bernadette arrives everywhere forty minutes early and then waits in the car rather than go in, a practice she calls being on time and I call a hostage situation. The Royal Ontario Museum will show a cast where the original cannot travel and nobody objects, because what people came for was the shape of the thing and the fact of it having happened.