Buried Treasure

by Gail Balentine

When I was growing up, a common expression in my house was, “Wait till the dust settles”. I used to wonder where it all settled. On moving day, when I went up to my parents’ attic, I found out. Dust covered boxes, bags, and trunks of every shape and size.

My parents, sister Patty, and brother Alan had each declined to help me sort through the things up there. Mom couldn’t maneuver the stairs with her arthritic hip, Dad was too busy elsewhere, Patty had no interest in the past since her divorce, and Alan wanted to wrap up at the house quickly and get back to the work he’d brought home. Just getting him to the house today had been tough. Their collective attitude was that the movers could pitch it all since it was useless junk and they already had their hands full downstairs.

After two hours, with my back aching and my resolve weakening, I had only managed to create a huge stack of boxes for the dumpster. I went downstairs for iced tea and sympathy, getting only the former. Patty delighted in pointing out that everybody had told me the attic was the last stop before the dump.

Alan and my father came back upstairs with me and helped remove the boxes, which cleared space in the center. Next I went to an old steamer trunk, wedged in a corner. It was filled with clothes that must have belonged to my mother “back in the day”. I dragged it out to the middle of the room. Behind it I was a large box of art supplies my sister used to hold dear. Dried up paints and matted brushes covered a sketchbook. When I opened it, it was filled with drawings of animals and someone with a huge nose that I feared was supposed to be me. That box went into the middle, too, and I got that tingle of excitement that tells me the idea I was forming was right.

I went searching for a particular item and found it four boxes later. When Alan was 10 years old, Dad and he spent an entire summer building a three foot sailboat; it was beautiful and sleek in the water until a remote-controlled speedboat rammed into it. Alan had been so bereft that he refused to listen to assurances that it could be fixed. After a few days of trying to reason with him, Dad packed the boat away in the attic and nobody ever mentioned it again.

At lunchtime, I walked into the kitchen to find each person working separately, in silence. I called to them and they turned to see me wearing what I thought was my mother’s prom gown, holding the sailboat in my right hand - good side showing - and the sketch book in my left, opened to a horse in full gallop with muscles that seemed to ripple off the page.

Unfortunately, with both hands full, I couldn’t take a picture to capture the looks on my family’s faces. My mother made a sound somewhere between a laugh and sob as she and Dad stared at the dress. His hand reached over to clasp hers. And Patty? Well, she just grabbed the drawing pad and said, “Damn! I was good!”

But it was Alan that made my eyes tear up. He looked like a child again, that perpetual scowl I hated replaced with a genuine smile.

Before I knew it, everyone was talking at once, laughing, and sharing stories, taking us back to a time before life had thrown us curves that we’d not seen coming.

As her fingers traced the outline of the horse, Patty spoke about how much she’d liked to draw, and Mom mentioned art groups at our local community center. Dad asked Alan if he thought Matt, the first grandchild, might like the boat and plans to fix it began right then.

Mom came over and hugged me. Turns out the dress was the one she wore for her and Dad’s engagement party. We went into the living room, put in an oldies CD, and rooted around in a box until we found the photograph album she wanted. We laughed at how young she and Dad looked that night.

That was how my husband found us when he arrived to help - sitting on the sheet-covered couch looking at pictures, Mom with pink cheeks and a sparkle in her eyes and me with a formal dress over my tee shirt and jeans, socks and sneakers on my feet, and hair filled with cobwebs.

He laughed and said, “Whatcha doin’?”

We replied in tandem, “Treasure hunting!”

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