Stuff

Each on of us has things that we deem important.  What an adult finds to be indispensable is very different from what a child collects.
For example, Pook used to bring me rocks all the time.  I still have bowls and jars filled with the rocks he used to bring me.  He would get particularly excited about the colors of the rocks.  Granite (you know, stones with little sparkles) were like finding gemstones and diamonds.  But he ones he loved the most were his "White Devil Rocks".  Please don't ask me what that means other than it was a rock that was white, but it was the best find for him. 

Mommy couldn't part with anything and she was very possessive of her belongings.  Everything had a place and everything was in its place.  Something happened during college and that trait completely disappeared!  But that is beside the point. Books were very, very important to her.  In fact, she had her own library catalogue system for her books.  Her siblings were welcome to borrow them, but they had to be returned in a timely fashion and I was enlisted to enforce late fees/fines.

I have boxes of legos, baseball cards, airplane cards, World War II collector cards, hats and t-shirts.  All of these were collected by the kids at various times.  And keeping them seemed to be a matter of life and death for them.  If one item was missing, they knew instantly. 

Doc used to have a collection of baseball cards.  It is still a sore subject for him.  This was a collection with original Mickey Mantles and that era of baseball.  His mother saved everything and I do mean everything!  She had original boxes from toys that her children had because it made the broken and missing toys more valuable.  She still had all the clothes that his oldest sister wore in high school.  I know this, because I was the one who moved all those boxes when she finally moved out of the home that she raised her family in.  She kept every newspaper that she ever received because she planned on reading them one day.  Yet, Doc has never forgiven her for giving away all those (now extremely valuable) baseball cards to a disabled boy down the street to attach to the spokes of his bike to make that "puttering" sound.  (Admit it - anyone in our age group did that.  We attached cards to our bike spokes with clothespins! And boy did our bikes sound cool when we sped away!)

Imagine my shock when cleaning out old jewelry boxes and finding some of my treasures.  I had a little plastic purse (gum used to come in them).  It was the perfect size for Barbie to use.  I had saved a little piece of yellow glass in the purse that I pretended was a jewel, like my birthstone yellow topaz.  Also in the box was a  blue and yellow ribbon from flowers that I got for Homecoming in high school and a piece of a lobster claw shell.  That one really fascinated my kids. I specifically remember when I got that treasure.  We had taken my grandmother to Florida on vacation and to my cousin's wedding in Alabama.  Dad was very frugal.  The kids all ordered off the Children's menu.  I don't care what our age was, we were the age required on the menu.  Grandma, however ordered lobster one evening which was something we had never seen.  My souvenir from that vacation was the empty shell I had removed from her dinner plate.  Fifty-some years later, I still have that treasure.  My kids were so shocked that they vowed to build me a whole lobster piece by piece every time we had any.  They got the body and a leg, and then one of the dogs found it and it is gone!  The thought was there though. 

Like I said, you never know what is valuable to someone else.  Me, that lobster claw will stay in its box forever and I hope it gets to heaven with me some day!!!!  Have a great week.  We are certainly blessed with sunshine today!