Treasures

Thinking of people and things that bring me joy, delight my heart or inspire me brought me to ponder the treasures I own (temporarily as I know as “you can’t take it with you!”) These gems stir my heart towards beauty and goodness. Anything that causes a longing for the eternal is a good thing in my book, or blog.

Here are some of the little things that inspire and transform me:

Photographs: one in particular is a photo of my dad right after the Ole Miss riots in 1962. He’s walking down a side walk on campus heading towards the camera wearing a suit with a cigarette in his right hand. He was 22 years old and a total bad ass.

Paintings: I am the proud owner of a Wyatt Waters painting called “Dear Dairy” that I bought when I had first graduated from college. I paid $50 a month for it to a gallery in Jackson, Mississippi (total of $550) and it’s now worth four times that. A stunning electric watercolor of a Dairy Freeze in Crystal Springs, Mississippi.

Pottery: When my roommate and I took a 19 day southern road trip, I found a treasure from a family of potters in Mississippi (I promise there isn’t a theme here, I like Yankee stuff too!) It’s a bird, made of clay and painted with an eggshell color head with the prettiest blues for his body. He’s sweet and healthy. My friend Kirsten has a bird and I had one as a kid. Their delicateness and chirping put a song in my heart.

One last treasure that I actually don’t own; I believe my cousins are the keepers at this time. When I was growing up I had two sets of grandparents in Mississippi. My mom’s parents lived in Greenville at the time (deep in the delta, cotton country) and visiting them was all about eating really great food, shopping for school clothes, looking at all the family photo albums, playing cards, playing with some neighborhood kids and watching TV. My dad’s parents on the other hand lived out in the country in the hilly part of northern Mississippi. Visiting them was also about great food, playing outside, looking for fossils, traipsing in the woods and spending hours in country graveyards. But another thing was reading the stacks and stacks of comic books. Not just any comic books, but comic books of fairy tales and myths. I would re-read these every time I went to their house. Seems that what I love about these “things” is the nostalgia of them. Which in the Greek means to return home again. Maybe there is a theme here. Maybe there is an undeniable call from the very soil of Mississippi that is constantly calling me back. My brother feels it too I think. Makes me wonder, makes me nostalgic.