TREASURE! IT'S MINE!

“Treasure!  Oh, ho!”

“Treasure!  It’s mine!” is any mans cry.   And, though at the bottom of the heap, the most treasured for all ages of man, are rocks.

We have them lovingly harbored in secreted places.

The firstborn’s teacher went on vacation and brought back crystal in its natural state. The white point looks like the tip of Washington’s monument parked at an angle. 

The second boy brought home from an Ireland trip some peat rock, black and shiny.

The middle boy picked up Selenite, which the local Oakies called Isinglass.  It was laying everywhere sparkling and creating reflective light as we toured the roadside leading to the bat cave.

The youngest would honor a geode from his grandparent’s cache.

Then there’s me.  My favorite rock is ruby.  A red ruby on a chain can’t be beat!  A close second is tanzanite!  Those blue-purple gems are beautiful, ha, ha, ha.

As I go about my housework, dusting the upstairs bedroom and especially the jewelry chest darling hubby had just gifted me, I hear, “It’s mine!” coming from offended lips of a youngster.   Some treasure is being absconded, I’m sure.

My own treasure’s have come up missing recently -- a small old red toy road grader I’d been keeping back for the boy to mature, and a stack of $12 dollars that I’d laid on the piano bench, just to name a couple.  

With three little ones it was hard telling what was going on, always an adventure.

Outside I went.  There they all were on the cement pad, playing with chalk making roads, and riding on their wheeled cars along the green and yellow outlines.  Wondering at their cries, investigating the circumstances, and endeavoring to make peace, I raised the seat of the little pastel blue riding toy.

I couldn’t help myself.   Like Long John Silver’s parrot, seeing missing treasures nestled all together under that lid, the cry came out,

“There’s everything!”