I’m pretty sure I should just ground myself — as in put on blinders, sit in my office and focus strictly on work.
I know I’m not the only one whose “collecting-habits” have increased lately. Some Negative Nancies even call it addiction, but I see no reason whatsoever to take it that far.
Not pointing fingers, but I see some of your collections building via daily/weekly box deliveries from the Pullman brown truck or the one with the purple and orange logo. I’m not bragging but the only constant deliveries we get from those trucks are the cases of Hint water the hubby guzzles down. No, I have to go out in search and wrestle my find into the back of the hubbies truck with ties-downs and wind tarps.
I realize some of you may be smart collectors and have amassed items of interest that can flourish financially: watches, stamps, coins, baseball cards, comic books, wine, antiques, rare books. For princess-sake, why couldn’t I be interested in collecting jewelry or something I could pass down to my daughters?
You know, like the perfectly pear-shaped 50.56-carat pearl that Philip II of Spain bought in 1582. Called La Peregrina, we all know it passed through the hands of eight kings of Spain over a 200-year period, and somehow was eventually purchased for $37,000 by Richard Burton to present to his wife Elizabeth Taylor. La Peregrina was sold at auction for more than $11 million just 10 years ago.
If I had perspicaciously and shrewdly chosen to collect jewelry, my daughters may have had the following conversation after my most heart-breaking demise:
Daughter 1: “I couldn’t take the La Peregrina, my dear sisters. Our beautiful Mother wore this every Thursday to hoe the garden and you know I hate weeding. One of you should take it.”
Daughter 2: “Mama would want us to share it, sweet sisters — why don’t we just have the armored car deliver it to one of our abodes each month and we can take turns partaking of this generous symbol of her love?”
Daughter 3: “Lovely idea sisters, but please allow me to have her necklace cleaned first. It is quite apparent that Ma must have been pulling weeds after a good rain as there is obviously dried compost and wood sorrel seed pods caught in the pendant area.”
Unfortunately for the offspring, their nonfiction conversation will sound more like this:
Daughter 1: “What was she thinking?”
Daughter 2: “I have no room for such things and I’m not digging them all up!”
Daughter 3: “Oh for Johnny-Appleseed-sakes! Let’s just take her tree collection list and bequeath them to our kids so they have to deal with it! Problem solved.”
That list includes:
- “Shu Shidare” Japanese maple
- “Moonrise” Japanese maple
- “Van Den Akker” narrow Alaskan cedar
- Chamaecyparis nootkatensis “Green Arrow”
- Pinus strobus “Angel Falls”
- Cedrus iibani “Hedgehog”
- “Koto-no-ito” Japanese maple
- “Taylor’s Sunburst” lodgepole pine
- Etc…
I have friends who collect beautiful antique lightning rods — I suppose it could be worse.
Janet Hommel Mangas grew up on the east side of Greenwood. The Center Grove area resident and her husband are the parents of three daughters. Send comments to [email protected].
