She loved treasures. Treasures to her were things with a history, things with a tale, things which carried with them a memory. Her treasures never made her wealthy by this world’s standards but she was a rich woman, nonetheless. There was the tattered quilt, pieced together by ancestors’ hands and well-worn by years of use. Snapshots of her growing up days, especially the one that showed her self-trimmed and too-short bangs. The big wooden bowl that once belonged to her mother, a large crack in the side parting the grain. An old rusty snuff tin that once resided in her centenarian grandmother’s pocket, a crusty railroad tie, a doll missing tufts of hair. Flower seeds saved year to year and kept in the refrigerator door. Old yellowed lace. Her wedding dress, worn once and packed carefully away in the cedar chest. These things are treasures to me like they were to her but not so much for the objects themselves. When I hold these things, smell them, even just think of them, I remember the stories she would tell. I remember how she could mimic the cadence and lilt of any voice, how she could don another’s expression as easily as I would don a coat. You see, her treasures weren’t things at all, they were the people those things represented.