Old dried up chicken bone = Magical Found Treasure

Chloe the ultimate junk-punk.

Doua and I revel in all of Chloe's quirky personality. She shines above all (my bias opinion of course). One of the most interesting things about our daughter is that she finds pleasure in the smallest of trinkets -- a rusty paper clip found on the street during a stroll to the park is indeed a rare find and could take her on several adventures before being placed carefully in her sacred "collection" of junk at home. To Chloe, however, junk is not a word to be used as every single piece is considered a treasure. "My treasure collection," so she calls it. Among the treasure collection is also a sizable collection of purses, to cargo around chosen pieces for the day to play with -- e.g., a found bead in the grass from an outing, a dinky hair clip from a cousin's doll, an old Canadian penny, a token from Chuck-E Cheese, the miniature toilet from her doll house, a dry twig, a teacup saucer found from a friend's backyard -- none related to each other but all of some significant importance that only Chloe can discern. As much as we try to cultivate and not intervene with this little hobby of hers, Doua and I, do, on occasion however, have to secretly weed through her treasure chest and toss some of it out. I also never thought that she would ever notice any of it missing -- which leads to the following scenario that had taken placed over the weekend.

Going through a purse that Chloe had brought along to a picnic on Sunday -- I came across a dried up chicken bone....and thought ??!!!??? a chicken bone? Sheesh, the things this little girl carries around with her! Disgusted, I threw it away and thought nothing more of it. That night, however, Doua expressed to me how disturbed and disappointed Chloe had been when she found out that her "magic" chicken bone had gone missing. “Daddy,” she said, “I can’t find my chicken bone. I need my chicken bone for a secret potion.” “I don’t know where it is. It’s ok, we’ll just have to find another one,” he told her. “Ok, I’ll just have to search for another one?”

He then told me the story of how the chicken bone had come to be in her possession – that she’d found it, digging in the sand, at the playground and just had to take it home, against his objections, because it was such a treasure of magic, and how he didn’t have the heart to toss it out every time he sees it as she was so insistent on its worth. So yes, I felt really bad having been the unknowing culprit and confessed that it was I who threw it out (to Doua and not Chloe). He then stated that he was a little concern that she would suddenly remember her bone at the dinner table, as we had chicken for dinner, and would replace one of those chicken bones with the one that I threw away, but when she didn’t, he’d figured that none of those bones were magical.

Chloe have never been a kid who had everything. Of course, we try our hardest to offer her the world, but just not materially. Her cousins and friends comes over and wonders why she doesn’t have any cool toys, and she would always try to impress them with her “My Little Ponies” and dress up clothes that she had received as gifts – but she would never explain what the twigs are or why she has six of them in her room. People also wonder why she’s always so happy when she doesn’t have much to be happy about. I can’t seem to explain it myself, but I do know that Doua and I are blessed to have such a spirited kid and we try to cherish every moment we have with her.

So anyway, the point I was trying to make was that kids are born with such vivid spirits and beliefs, and it’s almost always the parents who pulls them back into reality – sometimes a little too harsh and soon. I always have to fight with myself to try to find a healthy balance between the two – in harvesting her creativity by allowing her to be the silly imaginative kid that she is and being able to show her that sometimes princes and dragons don’t really exist. I just hope that one day she’ll grow up to be able to differentiate between the two on her own.