One morning while on vacation, I took my kiddos (5 and 7) to a beach. It was not a swimming beach as the sand was filled with stones and shells and crispy seaweed and the occassional dead fish. A single fisherman sat on a lawn chair on the far side of the beach and a single sun tanner sat by the dune fence by one of the entrances.
We walked up and down the sand, hunting for treasure, and dipping our feet in the water.
I found a piece of burnt driftwood that I liked the look of and a part of a shell. The shell was flat and had a pattern on each side. One side had a groove that reminded me of those luck stones they sell at tourist traps. I loved to rub my thumb over it. If I were an artist, I would have snagged some of the bigger pieces of drift wood and sea glass, and made a wind chime.
My daughter had a bucketful of shells. Shells with the outside that looked normal and a opalescent inside intrigued my daughter. She wanted to find a starfish or sea horse or one of those conch shells. The only spiral shells that survived in this area were ones the size of my thumbnail.
My son, however, had a bucketful of ‘ancient treasures’. Including bottle caps, a bone, fishing twine, and bird feathers. I stopped him before he grabbed the hotel mini-bar booze bottles and dead crab. Thus proving he had a very different idea of what was treasure.
What’s your idea of treasure?