Before we went to Italy I photographed all the jewelry I’d really miss if it were stolen. Some of the pieces have street value, but most of them are keepsakes and their associations are what make them valuable. My childhood charm bracelet with the teeny orange crate. Mom’s matching sweater pins with the blue, rose and yellow rhinestones. A cameo necklace from my grandmother. Rings from my sister and my sons.
I felt paranoid and silly, but took the photos anyhow. Two friends have had jewelry stolen while they were away from home. Because they didn’t have photos, their insurance companies couldn’t value the items and the police couldn’t identify the jewelry if they found the stolen property.
If my jewelry were stolen would I be comforted to get it back? Probably not. The simple joy in wearing the earrings, rings, and bracelets is that they’re pretty and I like thinking of the people who gave them to me. If they were returned to me after a theft, that event would distort my feelings about the pieces.
My impulse to treasure keepsakes is misplaced. Regardless of whether or not I possess the jewelry, I will have the memories of the occasions and the people who gave them to me.
What I really want is to protect what is irreplaceable. If only the police could show up at my door and return all of the people I lost last year: Mom, Aunt Corinne, Uncle Jim, and Uncle Rocky.
I am rich in memories but still making payments on how to accept impermanence and loss.
Lost in the woods and garden, I missed this post! I loved how you connected the objects to those dear to you, but realized that even if the objects were taken from you, you would hold their memories still. The line I loved best is: ‘If only the police could show up at my door and return all of the people I lost last year’ – so poignant.
As a heads up, I’ve tagged you for a writing challenge, if you are so willing. http://wp.me/p3O3z4-HN
In the early morning hours I woke to a death squeal. I stood with my ear pressed to the bedroom door. I didn’t want to open the door and have whatever was making that noise escape into our room. I also didn’t want to see what lay on the other side.
If this was Antonio or Crystel needing me I would have been upstairs in a moment.
Either this was a cat injured or another animal.
Jody hadn’t moved from the bed. She sat upright watching me. To her credit she is often upstairs first in the morning and has to deal with any carnage brought in during the night by our three young cats.
I heard rustling, then quiet. I waited. I turned the knob, peeked out the door.
“It’s a bunny,” I said, relieved. I brushed away the cats. Took a piece of paper and touched the animal. It didn’t move.
I opened our garage, retrieved a snow shovel that hadn’t been put away for the summer, and scooped up the cottontail. In the darkness I flipped it over our fence into the athletic field next door and went back to bed.
That same morning, I was reading the Sunday paper. I could hear the dog barking in the backyard. I took another sip of coffee and thumbed through the Variety section.
Jody came downstairs from the upper level. She had been on a work conference call. Maybe the barking got to her.
“The dog has a bunny,” she said looking out the patio door.
I went outside. This baby bunny was still alive. It was smaller than the one last night. I picked it up and held it in my hands.
Antonio came up behind me. “Here, I’ll take it.” He held out his cupped palms.
I handed the bundle carefully to him. He used his swimming towel to make a nest for the bunny in a small cardboard box and took the bunny to his room.
His being up complicated matters. In crept the concern about how he would regard my actions with this injured animal and how I wanted to raise him as a compassionate person. There would be no flipping this baby rabbit over the fence.
“Antonio, it says that you should put the bunny back where you found it. Maybe it will go back to its den.”
He took the bunny and lay it under a bush. Ten minutes later the bunny still hadn’t moved. Antonio retrieved the bunny and felt its body for the injury.
“Should we wake Crystel?” he asked.
“No.” I was hoping I would have the situation resolved by the time she awoke. I went through a list of possibilities and ended with the idea that taking the bunny two miles to Woodlake Nature Center and leaving it by the bird feeder would be the most humane act and something that Antonio could live with. Maybe a hawk would swoop it up.
“It’s the circle of life,” I told Antonio on the drive over.
At Woodlake we sat on the bench watching the birds fly back and forth to the feeders. Antonio cradled the bunny in his arms. I pulled up dead grass and made a nest for the bunny near the feeder. Antonio lay him gently down.
Once home, Crystel met us at the door.
“You didn’t wake me,” she accused.
Back at Woodlake, Crystel picked up the bunny and petted it. “Can we keep it?”
“No, Crystel. This is the best thing.”
She carried the bunny away from me singing, “It’s the circle of life little bunny.”
Cradling the bunny in the crook of her arm, she pulled dead grass with the other to fluff up the nest.
“His mother won’t find him,” she said.
“You’re right. Not this time.”
The bunny lay on her soft white polo sleeve.
“Hey, that’s my jacket.”
She laughed. “I know.”
I gave her a cockeyed glance.
She knew me well enough to know that I loved being her mother and that I wouldn’t mind the hours I spent on this tiny bunny because it had to do with her and Antonio. Even though it meant that the Sunday paper would end up in the recycling bin unread and I’d be doing an extra load of wash later that day.
I just submitted my memoir manuscript to a publisher. I sweated over every word of the query. I drafted the synopsis and revised it and revised it again so the narrator’s growth was woven into the plot. I fussed over the manuscript sample to make sure it was tight and engaging.
I believe in my book. If I didn’t think it was worthy, I wouldn’t have spent more than 10 years on it.
But as I read and reread my handiwork, doubt crept in. I thought, “Am I wasting my time? Will this book even appeal to the publisher?” I sent it off anyhow.
Next, I polished and fussed with my entry for a writing contest.
Once again, I was assailed by the same suspicion that this is a fool’s errand. I’ve entered that contest half a dozen times and haven’t won yet. Will this year be any different?
Some stubborn, optimistic part of me persists.
While working on these submissions, I countered my doubts with platitudes like, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t try.”
Then I questioned the platitudes. It’s ingrained in the American psyche to believe that you’ll succeed if you try hard enough. That isn’t always true. Sometimes you fail anyhow. Then you have to live with the failure and wonder if it’s your fault because you didn’t try hard enough. Huh?!? What maddening logic.
Americans also love noble failure and tell ourselves, “At least you tried.” That is comforting. Like many Americans, I do believe that it’s better to risk failure than to attempt nothing. Risk is scary, but safety is stifling.
Finally, I come back to Margaret Atwood’s sensible advice: “Writing is work. It’s also gambling. You don’t get a pension plan. Other people can help you a bit, but essentially you’re on your own. Nobody is making you do this: you chose it, so don’t whine.”
I’m going to stop whining. As for the entries? Stay tuned.
There are so many great writers out there with solid manuscripts that for some unknown reason are passed over, and it doesn’t seem fair at all. Maybe that’s why self-publishing is booming. I think it is important that you continue to try… I believe in you! Your writing is some of the best I’ve read, I mean it!
I so appreciate your support and the link to Rosanne!
bbachel
I will stay tuned. And have my fingers crossed. Was great to see you at AWP. Despite all the missteps, the conference did put some wind in my writing sails.
A few weeks ago, I visited Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona memorial. I wasn’t sure what to expect. My father was in the Navy during WWII at Normandy and later in the Pacific. I wanted to honor his service and the legacy of my parents’ generation who sacrificed and died to preserve our democracy. I…
“Crystel’s carrying the dining room table out of the house!” Jody said, a note of panic in her voice. “Now the chairs!” Quietly, I felt proud of Crystel. She was going ahead with gumption, emptying our house while we were in Florida, not asking permission, not making a fuss. Jody kept tabs on the coming…
I felt paranoid and silly, but took the photos anyhow. Two friends have had jewelry stolen while they were away from home. Because they didn’t have photos, their insurance companies couldn’t value the items and the police couldn’t identify the jewelry if they found the stolen property.
2 responses to “Treasure”
Thank you very much for putting my sorrow and loss to words. You nailed it
Lost in the woods and garden, I missed this post! I loved how you connected the objects to those dear to you, but realized that even if the objects were taken from you, you would hold their memories still. The line I loved best is: ‘If only the police could show up at my door and return all of the people I lost last year’ – so poignant.
As a heads up, I’ve tagged you for a writing challenge, if you are so willing. http://wp.me/p3O3z4-HN