A Few of my Favorite Things

The earliest things I can remember collecting were tiny boxes. You know, the clear colored ones at the Container Store, the ones that are sold at nick-knack stores, itty bitty jewelry boxes... anything that could hold something smaller, a minute treasure or sometimes just a secret.

As I've gotten older, I've refined the items I find and keep (though there are those that would argue with me).

I am most often lured to smallish egg shaped rocks--perfectly egg shaped. Some are drawn to heart shaped rocks and others have their specific preferences. But I like egg shapes. There's something about picking up a piece of the earth and having it fit so perfectly in my palm... the stories that are held inside...

Feathers also move me. For as long as I can remember in my adult life I have collected feathers. I have left vast collections of feathers at prior places of work. My locker at my current job was filled with feathers, bones, and other goodies I'd found before I took them all home. Traci was spot on when she asked if I was a collector. Yes, I am.

When we arrived in Newport I asked the kids to take their treasures and place them on their night stands. I wanted them to be as excited as I was to be in a new place and to be able to showcase all it had to offer. Lillie has several large clam shells and Niles has a few things too. Brent has even begun his own night stand show case, but none are as comprehensive as mine.

The above collection includes shells and egg shaped rocks from the beaches we've visited, buttons (one with a killer ship on it that I found while talking with Niles on a walk and a teeny shell button found when Lillie was having a crisis on another walk), cast off silk flowers I've found in streets, a plastic covered cigar band, a gull feather and a hawk feather that I found in the ocean surf, a long pine cone from a pine tree in a cemetery where the most handsome cat was waiting for lovies, and beloved crow feathers that I've found and have been gifted with.

I've come to a huge self realization: I think I was a broody hen in a previous life with a penchant for shiny things.