When Allison was Trent’s age shopping could be a drag. For everyone involved. Even other customers around us at the store. We would go to the store because Mommy wanted to and then Allison would wait impatiently for Mommy to look at some boring stuff and make up her mind about said boring stuff while fussing at Allison to stop touching things and crawling under the dressing room stall door. It was never an experience that either of us looked forward to.
Finding ways to entertain herself while waiting for Mom at the store became a creative endeavor that Allison attacked with vigor. There was a whole repertoire of activities that could make Mom crazy enough while shopping that she might just cut the whole trip short. There was Mirror Dancing, Crawling Under Clothing Rack Tunnels, Cart Climbing, Tag Pulling, Icee/Toy Begging, Fragile Item Touching and my personal favorite: Trash Collecting.
Of the myriad of choices to pick from Trash Collecting was without a doubt the one thing that could produce a reaction resulting in a quicker shopping experience and Allison used it often. There’s lots to look at in a store for grown ups, but for little people the fascination is not what’s for sale. It’s what’s on the floor. And there’s lots there folks. Lots.
As we made our way through the store, I’d be looking up and Allison would be looking down. Like breadcrumbs in the forest, the items she saw on that floor would lead her places I did not appreciate her being led, distracting me from my mission. She would find buttons, paper clips, price tags, sequins, plastic, fuzz balls, thread, pennies. You name it, it was probably there somewhere and she would find it.
We’d get in the car and her pockets would be chock full of department store trash and she was beaming. She loved it. And me….I was scowling. I would say, “Allison, why do you HAVE to pick up that garbage?” And one day, smiling, she stopped me in my tracks by saying, “Mom, it’s not trash. It’s treasures! I’ve got treasures!” She would take them home and put them into some little box and save them until the next treasure hunt when she could add to them again. I never called the things she collected anything other than Treasures after that. The name stuck, and when I thought about how it kept her occupied while I hunted for my own Treasures, the expensive kind, I could look at the trash as something I almost appreciated in a wierd kind of way.
Shopping with Allison is a totally different experience now that she is almost eleven. We are usually on the same mission these days and she has outgrown her own Treasure Hunting days. But fighting us every step of the way, no matter where we happen to be, is the newest treasure hunter in our midst. Trent. The difference is he is a boy and he is much louder and more active about it, which makes both me and Allison nuts at times. And the hunting isn’t limited to stores. His Treasures are rocks, stickers, acorns, feathers, sticks, seashells, snail shells, a tiny statue left behind in the sand at the beach, sand FROM the beach, broken toys and beads. From ANYWHERE he can find them. And he keeps them all lined up on the windowsill in his room, a proud assembly he refers to as My Collection. But no matter how annoying it can be that he is always clutching some little piece of the world to save, after learning from Allison,we have always praised and encouraged his Treasures and he cherishes that Collection.
And every time I see them there on the windowsill it reminds me to stop and look at the little things….the moments that make me crazy….the trash that accumulates in my life at times….and consider whether they might just be Treasures after all.
And I learned this from the best Treasure Hunters I know. My kids.
