Corner
of the backyard has a fenced in section. It’s small, just a few
feet across and not at all deep.
One
of the golden retrievers—don’t want Canasta to feel bad by naming
her as the culprit, but, yeah—loves to do things in the back yard
that involves putting anything in her mouth. She grabs sticks
and rocks. Digs for roots and, yes, more rocks. Has been seen
chewing at the fence and paver stones.
When
I’m out there with her, I’ll often remove the items from her mouth
and toss them onto the other side of the fence. I’m pretty sure
she views the area as a stockpile of treasure so valuable by this
point that a squirrel had best never be sighted near it.
One
day, while walking over to that vault of hers with some sort of
vine-like thing that I’m fairly certain doesn’t grow within five
hundred miles of our home, it struck me that all of this stuff
was interesting to her. She was excited by it. All of it. May
have forgotten some of the things that were stored there by now,
but at some moment in time she possessed it and treated it as
if it were the most amazing thing ever.
In
my basement I have boxes of treasures. Excited by the contents,
or at least excited enough that I had to store them for a later
day. Some of it I’ve probably forgotten I even have. At some moment
in time, all of it was something I needed or wanted or found pretty
darn terrific. (And, most of it, probably less interesting and
less valuable than many folks would find Canasta’s sticks.)
Neighbor
gets a lot of stuff from online ordering. Does so often enough
that a truck from one company-we-won’t-name basically should have
an assigned parking spot in her driveway. Deliveries arriving
so frequently that you can’t help but wonder what all of it is.
Big boxes. Small boxes. Envelopes. Multiple boxes on multiple
days.
Ran
into her husband at the grocery store and we talked for a bit.
Somehow, that day’s delivery came up, which turned to a few questions,
and it turns out the answers aren’t quite that amazing. Thanks
to free returns, she often overorders clothes and simply tries
them on at home. The vast majority of arrivals are actually quite
soon turned back around and returned.
Not
quite the massive pile of treasure I was expecting to hear about.
Still,
all of us interact with things in different ways. A trip to a
theme park. Some of us collect the photographs they take on the
rides. Some of us collect hats and tshirts. Some of us collect
souvenir insulated beverage tumblers. Some of us collect memories.
Treasures to us all.
Someone
I know has a massive pot. While she was growing up, she and her
grandmother used it to cook in her grandmother’s kitchen. Years
of experiences of the two of them cooking together. Having eaten
her grandmother’s cooking many times, I can tell you her grandmother
was a brilliant cook. She’s… well… ahem… she’s not as brilliant.
She doesn’t host many events that call for using a massive pot,
nor does she break it out for personal use that often. Try to
take it away from her though and you are likely not going to leave
her house without significant assistance and a need for long-term
medical care.
Canasta
needs to go outside. That means I’m a few minutes away from retrieving
a stick or telling her to stop digging. Frankly, it’s exhausting.
Maybe to relax after we come back in I’ll head downstairs and
pull out a scrapbook or two. (Need to appreciate my treasures
while I still can.)