Storytelling Sunday Three: Pick Your Precious

Storytelling Sunday Three? There is no excuse for not joining in with this one - everyone can do it! Pick Your Precious is about celebrating the little things you love: those souvenirs, bits and pieces, things from your past you can't bear to throw out. You know, the special little something you have tucked away in a drawer or up on a shelf? Or the thing you  love most in a room? Or the object you would save if you knew you had to leave the country? Your favourite things.

Ready to begin?

A Postcard In Primary Two

It's February. The month of love. And for that reason, as I was picking my precious, i was thinking about things given to me with love. There are a few pieces of jewellery, fancy handbags, even - but these are the kind of things I would leave behind if I had exit in a hurry. I'd take the man who gave them to me instead. So, in the end I've settled for a simple postcard.

It's not perfectly precious, I'll admit it; but I've held on to it for forty years now, so I guess that means I'm attached. If I disappeared tomorrow, someone would look at it and laugh and wonder what it meant. And, if he or she knew me well enough, they'd know, of course, that there would have to be a story. So here it is.

When I was six my Dad got a new job. A good one, an exciting one; but it did mean moving to a new town. And a new house and a new school. The school thing was hard. I'd only started the year before, and I'd made my friends and shown them that I could read; and suddenly I was being asked to do it all over again..

But when I got there I discovered there was somebody else in a new uniform, with a different accent and parents from out of town. You notice these things in a class of ten. ..

So Ian and I quickly became fast friends. We played houses every lunchtime and he went out to work while I stayed home and tidied. He had a hand knitted school sweater, I remember, and nice brown hair, and one day he came in and said that his dad had been transferred and they'd have to move. Which was not what a girl wants to hear when she sees babies and a cosy little cottage in their future.

They did move, too, quite soon after and it was a wrench. My love life was in tatters and I had to play with the girls instead. One afternoon, a couple of months later, I was settling down to an hour of comprehension cards when the teacher came back from the Staffroom with a handful of post. She pulled a brightly coloured (very brightly coloured. and coloured very brightly too) postcard from the pile and she handed it..to me. It was from Ian! And it was all a bit surreal. A postcard sent to school? Nobody ever got post in school. From abroad? From my boyfriend friend who happened to be a boy? With all the words spelled out in different colours. Wow. 

It still makes me smile to think about it now and that postcard continues to sit in my collection of special letters. I only heard from him the once. But that was enough. He cared. He sent me a precious postcard. And I kept it.

And that's my story for February. Now, how about yours? Show us some pictures, tell us the story behind whatever you choose: it's all good. Write your post, with an introduction linking back to Storytelling Sunday (so your readers get the idea, the more the merrier!) and come link us up. I'm looking forward to reading about your treasures..

..More information can be found on the Storytelling Sunday page. And, don't forget, any story will be welcomed. It doesn't have to be precious in any way at all! Whatever you have in your head will be just fine: small or tall, we'll read them all. And if you are reading in a Reader, click through now to join in...