Celebration 4

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ashtray in desk

4

In my desk, nestled among the odd assortment of books and keepsakes (including Hashimoto, my stuffed toy dog companion of nearly sixty years), sits an old, chipped, cut glass ashtray bearing eclectic objects. The ashtray was my mother’s, and was one of the few possessions she was able to bring with her to the U.S. after she married my dad. It’s a rather ironic keepsake, as my mom, a heavy smoker for some sixty years, died from lung cancer, and it appears that I will, too, though I’ve never smoked. Nevertheless, it remains one of my most prized possessions. In it, you’ll find an old, broken, silver pocket watch (a father’s day gift to my dad in the late 70s), a lock of Stephanie’s hair, my dad’s original army dog tags, multiple mandolin and guitar picks, including one given to me by Kinky Friedman, author, musician, and one-time candidate for governor for the state of Texas, and various polished stones. Not one of these items has great monetary value, yet they’re all priceless to me. They all have stories.

What are your treasures? How did they come to be so valued? What are their stories?

48 thoughts on “Celebration 4”

  1. Rock

    Plucked up seven years before I was even born,
    when you were five, from a dry riverbed in France
    & squirrelled into your jeans pocket, your rock—

    whitish, smooth & marbled in a way
    you were too young to identify as organic,
    with its strange little slit from out of which

    a prehistoric monotreme’s pink & hairless infant
    may have slithered & risen to the surface,
    too diaphanous to be taken with the current,

    a million years before the volcanic cataclysm
    that swallowed it & petrified its sheath
    into its final shell-like form—

    the rarest of those treasures your mother never
    recognized as such & which normally turned up
    in the lint screen to be tossed out the kitchen door—

    would have a future which, this time, you determined
    by placing it on a shelf atop your nightstand, or sometimes
    beneath your pillow & eventually into backpacks lugged along

    on international relocations, domestic treks & camping trips,
    into & out of college dorms, aboard Navy aircraft carriers
    & into a Texas bungalow, your fraught first marriage’s

    decades-long abode; until, in the second-most-deliberate
    decision you’d made to date, to ensure that I’d never
    spend another Christmas empty-handed & with no cause

    to wonder whether I would cherish this steadfast avatar
    of your boyhood dreams—
    its slick, calcified breath in a palm’s-breadth of heft—

    you gift-wrapped & shipped your beautiful rock,
    your life-long companion, earthen talisman
    of endurance beneath the mutable sky, to me—

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  2. I so love and appreciate these celebrations and this one rings so familiar and true to me. So many treasures: my 63-year-old stuffed dog Morgan, who has been with me wherever I’ve lived in the world (except Taiwan). The plastic solar calculator my father pushed across the table to me with a big grin when I admired its efficiency, bellowing (he always bellowed): “Take it, Alison! I have another one!” The journals I kept about each of my children for every year of their lives until they turned twenty. The ashes of my dogs and cats, their collars, their photos. The filigreed hair clip my older daughter gave me, delicate and beautiful like everything she gives me, and like she herself. The copy of Heidi I cherished as a child. The red rain boots my son wore every day for years until they literally broke apart. So many others. Thanks for this beautiful post, Robert. Love to you.

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  3. Let’s see, which ones shall I choose? I have a little crystal teddy bear my husband gave me years ago, the head of which keeps falling off and being glued back on. A seriously knifed and gouged wooden cutting board in the shape of a pig. I pulled it out of the trashbag when my mother was downsizing to go into assisted living. A clay dog my daughter made when she was in elementary school. It was supposed to be a dinosaur, but the neck and head fell off. An amethyst ring my grandmother gave me when I was twelve; it was given to her when she turned twelve. I could go on . . . but I won’t!

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  4. Not Found on Any Map

    Scattered, like the gray matter
    that assigns them value,
    their significance lost to
    most observers, are
    the things I treasure.

    A box filled with negatives
    and photos older than most of
    my possessions. Hand-colored
    wedding photos taken nine months
    before my birth. Hundred-year-old
    portraits of family I’ll never meet,
    or meet again, their place
    on my walls taken by artwork
    from the hands of treasured friends.

    A metal cigar box passed on
    by my grandfather, holding
    meaningless items left untouched
    for half-a-century. Ink-pen tips.
    The nametag from my first job
    as a store clerk. A devotional
    scapular not worn in sixty-plus
    years that recognizes a highlight
    of my youth, even in its insignificance.
    But the metal box? That is a treasure.

    A spatula held by my mother
    as she served pie or cake.
    The tiny mission-style table
    that once belonged to her
    as a teen, that I refinished as a teen,
    now sitting beside my recliner.
    Tools worn by my father’s hands
    that feel comfortable in my own.
    The grandfather clock I built
    for their anniversary that will,
    one day, chime for my children.

    The band on my wrist, part of the bond
    between father and daughter forged
    in the health crisis of her early years.
    A stained-glass frame and its photo,
    a father’s pride in three broad smiles.
    A canvas print of two people joined
    in marriage beside a lighthouse
    on the shore of Lake Erie.

    Gallon jars filled with beach glass
    collected on the shore of Lake Ontario.
    Anchors and bottles, some of them clay,
    all used and discarded before my time,
    found during underwater adventures,
    some of my favorite times.

    As scattered as my memories can be,
    the value of my treasures is magnified
    by the memories they hold. The closer
    I hold them, the longer I hold on to
    those memories, my greatest treasure.

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  5. In our living room I have a wooden bowl (carved as a large shell) with various treasures:
    A brass bracelet I was given by a bedouin girl at Petra, Roman pot shards and an Ancient Greek Loomweight from Sicily, shells from various beaches, a pine cone from the Black Forest, the hospital ID tags put on my sons at birth, pumice from the Azores, a carved fertility doll made by my brother, a tiny fluffy bee cake decoration from my 21st birthday cake, my childhood dancing medals, and my husbands Blue Peter Badge. This last item is buried deep, so that casual visitors don’t see it, as it is a valuble item in the UK!.

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  6. Mmmm, where to begin? This challenge might lead to a whole book of tribute poems to oddities and treasures I’ve been hanging onto (emotionally as well as physically) – some since childhood, the collection continues to grow today in my 70s. Love your value statement: priceless – all have stories

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  7. That’s a really tough question, especially since I’ve spent a lot of time the past few years going through my accumulations in the hopes of clearing things out. Probably the most emotional thing so far was a box of cards and letters I saved. Just to see the handwriting, and to realize not only that so many of the letter-writers were gone, but that method of communication–so much richer than email or even a phone call–is also gone forever. I also have a strong attachment to a green metal ash tray on which I wrote “Miss Wilms” in gold for my great aunt that was used not for her cigarettes (another nail in the coffin, she said as she lit up), but for our penny poker games, some shreds from my older daughter’s blankie, and the many roses are red poems that continue to be penned by the younger one for every occasion. (K)

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  13. Maybe it’s because I’ve shed so many skins that the things that I’ve gathered in the last few years (a lot of rocks, a miniature barn owl, a stuffed fox) are more numerous (and meaningful) than the few things I’ve kept for a long time — but there is a figure of the Egyptian goddess Bast (in her cat-headed anthropomorphic form) that I made when I was a teenager, and she is every bit as magical as she was when I made her. It’s a little eerie, the condition she’s in! 🙂

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  14. For the 18 years that I had my Mom, she wore a thin gold bangle bracelet, the first gift she received from my Dad. Even though they split up, she never took the bracelet off. It was bent and worn, but it was beautiful. She wore it until she died, and then it was slipped onto my wrist. She is always with me.

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  15. My treasures are… my regrets. This is because the only reason I have them is that took grand chances and my unique regrets are the aftermath of a life still spend flying around the world in search of the ultimate Beauty, the ultimate sounds (that are often music!). Every regret is the shadow of a towering memory. And since both memory and materials can be lost I am no more or less empty if/when I lose both. It’s a win/win…

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    • I have few true regrets, other than wishing I’d responded better in certain situations, that I’d been kinder, more mindful of others. My life choices have led me to here, today, and truthfully, I’m more at peace with the world, and myself, happier, even (oddly enough), than ever. I do often wonder “what if,” but who doesn’t?

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  16. I have a container like that, in fact , I have three in various areas of my office. The items I would notice if they were missing– beaded bracelets from my daughter when she was crafty like that, around 10, a marble and a matchbox car–she liked them better than the marbles;
    a guitar pick from my best friend in 1986 that she got at an inxs concert, along with a couple of guitar picks from my son that he left behind when he moved out;
    her lock of hair, his lock of hair, and one I am not sure who it was from, their hair color was so similar. I will probably label it one or the other, since no one will know when I am gone;
    my grandma’s rosary, my great-grandma’s broach, dot dot dot

    I love this thread. I hope it keeps going.

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