Treasure Found?

I have had a very lazy Memorial Day. The one thing I did do was clean out the junk drawers in the kitchen. Junk is not the right word. They are the drawers of random important stuff that is not cooking related, for the most part. Pens, batteries, bag clips, glue, Shay Medicines. Important stuff, but stuff that get’s easily disorganized.

I threw away a lot of old rubber bands and twist ties, about 100 corks, dried up pens, spilled toothpicks and dead batteries. There was pen I found that I could not bring myself to throw away.

It is a wooden Pinocchio pen with Carter’s name on the hat. It hasn’t worked for some years, but has remained in the junk drawer ever hopeful. We bought this pen in the small Tuscan village of Collodi, home of Pinocchio, that we visited with Carter in 2008. It was a magical trip of two weeks in Tuscany in the summer before the stock market crash. I am ever thankful we took that trip without the knowledge of what would happen to the economy just four months later.

I guess because of the crash, I felt like that little wooden pen held more value than it should. All the extravagant travel which we had done so freely the previous years probably was more well thought out after the crash.

So when the pen ran out of ink I held on to it. Thankfully, we continued to travel and other pens were purchased. So today when I was testing pens in the junk drawer I did not hesitate to thrown anything inkless away, except for Pinocchio.

It is such a beautiful little treasure that holds so much memory of a wonderful trip I just could not throw it away. So I left it on the counter to think about.

Then it came to me. I am going to tie a red and Green ribbon around it and turn it into a Christmas tree ornament. The Italian flag colors of Red, green and white make it the perfect Christmas decoration. This way I can keep it in a useful and beautiful way. A memory of our day in Collodi and Carter as a young girl.