A bowl full of treasures

I am not a person who collects knick-knacks, yet I do collect the little things along my life’s path.

Taking a (closer – one tends to no longer see that, which one sees every day) look at my book shelf this morning I noticed my little glass bowl full of “treasures”:

·      Several sand dollars – most collected from the beach that I used walk at my little sisters: legend has it that if you take a sand dollar with you, you will return.

·      The leaf ornament that my brother gave his sisters last fall after a visit to Yosemite.

·      A piece of driftwood collected in Northern California.

·      Shells collected on the beach of Isle of Palms in South Carolina (note that the above were from the Pacific Coast, the latter from the Atlantic Coast).

·      A piece of money with the Maltese cross from a recent trip there.

·      Bits of rock and stone from many other trips (due to luggage concerns these days, one can no longer bring back larger items, but a small bit of rock is often in my suitcase).

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Looking further on the same bookshelf were other artifacts (o.k. none archeologically important, but in the sense of “art” and “facts”), which although of no or little monetary worth, are pieces of my past, treasured for the memories they induce:

·      A small Mexican man in stone, which graced my mother’s cactus garden

·      A piece of painted driftwood, from a beloved aunt: made all the more precious when I discovered that it was a cousin who had done the painting on the driftwood – talk about serendipity

·      My baby shoes in bronze

·      A letter opener in wood from our three-year stay in Hawaii

·      A candle from my nephew’s wedding

·      A wooden box from the Redwoods, CA

·      Numerous pictures of my family and my husband’s family, of our young family and favorite occasions throughout the years including one in a paper maché frame made by the younger son.

And there are even a ton of books!

All are treasured, all remind me of happy times, places and people.