Treasures from the Trash Can

"Mom, Mikayla is going through my trash can!" Oh the joys of being an older sister and the joys of having an older sister!

When they were much younger, our oldest daughter, Katie, would fuss at her younger sister, Mikayla, for going through her things. These usually weren't things that were of any value to Katie. They were typically things that she had thrown away but the act of someone else going through her things, even if they were in her trash can just didn't seem right to her. Mikayla, on the other hand, was a sort of pack rat. She had a habit of keeping things. She enjoyed going through her sister's trash hoping she would find something of value, at least something of value to her.  One year, at Christmas, I became the recipient of one of Mikayla's new found treasures -a walnut shell split perfectly down the middle. That walnut shell became the housing for my Christmas gift from her that year, 73 cents neatly tucked inside with a piece of scotch tape wrapped around it securing the two pieces of the shell together.

I have some things that I call my treasures.  They are things that mean a lot to me but really would mean very little to anyone else. They're things like an old cook book that belonged to my Granny, a small painted flower pot that was a Mother's Day gift,  and almost empty perfume bottles that belonged to my mom just to name a few. When I remove the cap of one perfume bottle in particular and smell the scent of the perfume, it seems like she's right there in the room with me. We all have things that mean so much to us but really nothing to anyone else.

It is said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. While others may see these simple items that I cherish as trash, their beauty shines brightly to me.  It is those things like the empty walnut shell, the almost empty perfume bottles, the little flower pot that has found its resting place beside the "good china", that serve as reminders to me. They remind me of the value of the relationships that those items represent and the value of those relationships cannot be measured.