Relativity

I found a diamond on Thursday, after all - not in the Crater (that was fun, but fruitless) but in a little shop I hunted during a late break. It was in a beautiful (and inexpensive) 14K charm shaped like a stylized lily - very Art Nouveau, very me. Since I'd also found a gold chain on the cheap in an antique shop in Tennessee (sporting a hideous pentant in the costume stuff) I now have a fabulous gold-and-diamond necklace for under $30. With the pair of pretty gold earrings I found in the same basket ($5 - needed some serious cleaning) I have a new "outfit" for my jewelry box.

And then there's family.

I'm actually writing this on the fly - I have pictures of the Crater, and some other stories to tell, but we're driving 300 miles today to get to my sister's other house, the one on the lake, so we can spend a few days on jet skis. It's a major undertaking. My mom needs oxygen, so we have both her machine for the house and tanks for the trip. She also needs her wheelchair and/or her new scooter. I'm driving the van with all that and my teenage nieces while my sister and my brother and sister-in-law drive back through a different town to return the rental car to their airport - they don't need it where we're going, not with that many cars already there.

I didn't have a good attitude last night when this plan was hatched - the only logical plan, by the way. It had been a good day. Not only did I clean up all of my new jewelry (and discovered the gold earrings really were gold) but I found out my sister-in-law had a Tiffany & Co. bracelet that she'd gotten from a company she worked for 15 years ago, a bracelet she loved and wore ever day - a bracelet that obviously matched the earrings I found at that yard sale. Of course I gave her the earrings - why else had I found them? - and though I had a twinge of sadness, it was worth it to see it reunited with its set-bit, and worth it even more to see her face.

So I'm working on it. I love my family. My sister has the care of my mother 24-7, every day, and she does it with love and patience. She is a model for what I want to become, for what I plan to be today and all through the week. I only hope I can live up to her standards, and never forget where the real treasures in my life are found.