Treasured
Greeting cards and sentiments
handwritten and signed by those
once children, others now long
gone – letters still somehow un-
yellowed folded pieces of lined
school paper filled with love and
song lyrics passed in the hallway
by a sweaty palm of a lovely boy
eager to move from friend to some
things – these things – photographs
catalogued one winter when dread
assailed and thoughts of a looming
horizon motivated legacy leaving –
ahh the files, the files, manilla tabbed
and computer coded – filled with words
words, words, research, reflection, books
written and in halted progress a pilgrimage
of poems – trapped as data – some escaped
into volumes, stray pieces of printed paper,
handwritten scratches , oh the binders of
would be novels, that would not breathe,
and the paraphernalia, jewelry, a diamond
ring of promises made and broken another
of promises kept and delivered evermore,
my mother’s father’s tiny police shield
mounted on a gold disk that my mother
wore every day, I broke the chain,
forget the jewelry, lovely in their own
right but not keepsakes, not worth
reciting gemstones and turquoise,
the baby ring I wore in kindergarten
chewed through somehow, the
charm bracelet of childhood, jangling
with small tokens, a parakeet, a bicycle,
a typewriter, even then…
on and on the things, the things, when a super
storm hit – I packed a plastic container with all
considered vital.. it is in the bottom of a bedroom
closet – I’d leave it now if rains fell..books written
have been writ, poems published have been read,
jewlery mere stones, sentiments remembered,
no need to gaze upon handwritings, of children now
no longer adoring nor parents and grandparents whose
adoration remains without a card .. perhaps my grandmother’s
letter where she thanked me for being a wonderful granddaughter
a year or two after my father’s death, or my father’s letter, written
at twenty before heart surgery he did not expect to come through…
maybe, maybe not. What is truly a treasure, tangible and precious-
a notecard from my analyst and mentor an almost magical woman
who lived in a house with a white arbor lush with pink roses, a sitting
room of chintz and the kindest, wisest eyes ever to look upon me, perhaps,
her note card – saying that something about her feeling for me, perhaps not –
Most definitely the wedding bands upon my hands - if not worn they would certainly be in a
treasure box, the “wow” one on the occasion of our twenty-fifth when things were good shining
with my husband’s obvious usually completely unstated pride, the simple gold band, we
married in, yes these, yes these and the half cut glass bowl that sat on my grandmother’s
table – that crashed to the floor several years ago … half shattered… a large semi circle
remaining…still holding in the prism of rainbow reflections the love of a life-time
the rings, and the the broken bowl my legacy, my treasure. I think of tossing all else and it
brings me joy and clarity as does the peace that I need not do anything. I know if a storm were
to come or I simply heeded the call to go…
I would check my fingers for my rings, wrap the sharp edges of the shimmering remnants of
my grandmother's cut glass bowl in a piece of her worn soft rose quilted coverlet and walk out
through the door
unencumbered.
