Treasure

Monica: Michael was working on a project that required him to rip out a chunk of floor in a house that is over 130 years old. At the end of the day, he came home with his pockets full of treasure: a faded postcard mailed from Switzerland in 1922, a small bit of orange-gold cloth tied with red yarn, an old pipe insulator, a child's list of "seacret" places in the house, a wooden marble, a small plastic chicken, a white stone with a hand-painted ladybug on one side and "M Hinkel Fall '86" on the other, and two pairs of 70s-era ladies' underwear. Michael has had a lifelong fascination with secret hiding spots and buried treasures. He routinely "hides" messages or tokens in things he builds in the hopes that someone years later will discover his message from the past. I love that he found an unexpected cache collected over time, each object a token of another time and another place.

Evelyn: When I got the word "treasure" I immediately considered staging a collection of all the intricate knobs, trinkets, and oddities I have collected from nature throughout my journey. I display them on a shelf, much like the typical frippery people pick up from dollar stores, antique malls, and eBay excursions. However, I instead spent time with a close friend, on his birthday, and recognized the unending joy I feel about having such treasures in my life—the souls of true "framily"—with whom I connect and make meaning with on a regular basis. So as he dug into his pastry present for the treasure of chocolate folded deep in its layers, I also found, sitting there with him, a warm glow of contentedness deep in the layers of my being, He is a blessing that trumps anything that can be plunked on a shelf.