Seven Treasures, part 18: guest post by Suzanne Adam

SUZANNE ADAM left her native California for Chile in 1972 to marry her Chilean boyfriend. She explores how this experience has shaped her life in her memoir-in-progress Marrying Santiago. A member of Santiago Writers, she has had narrative essays published in The Christian Science Monitor, California Monthly, and Sasee Magazine.

Tree-hugger, avid memoir reader, nature writer, talker to stray dogs and cats, gardener, CNN news junkie, serious recycler, walker, birdwatcher, lover of storms and laughter, Pilates aficionado, and doting granny, she’s embracing aging and working up the courage to let her hair go grey.

1.

The chimes of my grandmother’s clock were the background music marking the passing hours of my childhood days. Now the clock stands on the mantel of my home in Santiago. Its plain wooden case has a delicate tracery inlay of lighter wood below the clock face, which bears Roman numerals and, in tiny print, the words “Made by The Sessions Clock Company, Forestville, Conn. U.S.A.”

The ring of the chimes evokes my distant family home, the marble-topped table in the living room where the clock stood, the view of Red Hill from the window behind, and my mother bending over to wind the clock with its brass key. I do the winding now — when I remember.

2.

As an only child, I was my father’s frequent fishing companion. One day, years later, I discovered in an old cigar box a black and white photograph of us fishing at an inlet of San Francisco Bay. We both wear baggy blue jeans. I am five years old and hold my father’s fishing pole, its tip pointing out over the rippling water. My father stands close behind me, watching, a smile on his face. There were other father–daughter fishing excursions as I grew older; my favourites were in a rowboat at Lily Lake in the Sierra Nevada in the silent dawn, when the trout were biting.

3.

The Andean peaks I see from my window never cease to awe me, but I hold a place in my heart for the hills and forests of northern California where I grew up. Years ago, a month before my father died, I bought a redwood seedling, encased in a plastic tube, and smuggled it, hidden in my parka, past Chilean customs agents. I wouldn’t attempt that deed now, but that was before the word biodiversity entered my vocabulary. I planted the seedling in my city garden, thinking of it as a memorial to my father. Now, the sight of the towering tree’s full needled branches transports me back to the place I left behind. It is my companion as I push my roots deeper into this foreign soil.

4.

Each time I travel, I want to immerse myself in the landscape so that later I may remember the feel of it. I cannot resist bringing a memento back with me, and, as I walk along, rocks slip into my pocket as if by their own accord. They contain rich geological information, but I lack the knowledge to decipher it. The scientific terms that I learned in geology class at university have slid into lost crevasses of my memory. Turning over in my hand a smooth russet oval, I no longer remember its origin. But other stones carry clues in their shape, colour, and texture: the shiny black basalt from the rim of a crater on Easter Island; the porous, feather-light stone found floating in a Patagonian lake near the Caulle volcano; the thin, striated shale gathered from the banks of Glen Alpine Creek near Lily Lake; the smooth, oval ones, white speckled with black, like bird eggs, from Italy’s Elba Island; and the rough chunk of sediment bearing a sand dollar fossil imprint found on a wind-blown Patagonian plateau. My rocks comfort my nature-starved spirit and take me back to those wild places.

5.

I inherited a small, ochre-coloured chest that had been in my family home in a nook by my bedroom door. Its seven slim drawers held an assortment of household items: piles of greeting cards, tablets of sheer airmail paper, a rainbow palette of spools of thread, scissors, a hem-measuring stick. What makes this chest so special is the scent that wafts from its interior — the smell of my childhood bedroom, of wood, books, paper, and pencils. Often as I pass by, I open a drawer, bend down, and breathe in deeply. It evokes not only a visual memory, but something deeper, subconscious, a communion with the past — with the small room where I read the Wizard of Oz series, listened in bed to the owl hooting in the night from the eucalyptus tree, wrote in my diary about my latest crush, and tried lipstick for the first time.

6.

My oldest friend Paula gave me a silver fruit knife, bought at an antiques shop. She fashioned a felt bag for it with a tag that read, For a sterling friend. She explained that I was to use the knife as a letter opener. Paula, overwhelmed by her life’s vicissitudes, seldom writes now. We see each other only once a year during my visits back home. But when I take the letter opener in hand and read her dedication, I am reminded of her enormous creativity and sense of humour, and know we are always in each other’s thoughts.

7.

His smooth, olive hands bore no ring. His appearance gave no clue as to his age or job. Exchanging smiles and “Buenas tardes,” we settled back for the long flight from Barranquilla, Colombia, to Mexico City over the jungles and mountains of Central America. He introduced himself as Alfonso from Ecuador and explained he was returning to the Mexican village where he worked as an anthropologist and priest. I’d been visiting the Colombian barrio where I’d served as a Peace Corps volunteer. We soon became absorbed in conversation, sharing thoughts and experiences like two people on our own planet. When the sky darkened, he pointed out the glimmering stars, saying they reminded him of The Little Prince. As I hadn’t read the book, Alfonso related the encounter of the little prince with a fox, who explains how the boy can tame him by being patient and returning at the same time each day and moving slowly towards him.

Too soon, the captain’s voice interrupted, announcing our approach to Mexico City. In the terminal Alfonso and I embraced. I don’t remember our parting words.

Weeks later, a thin, brown package, bearing a Mexican postmark, arrived at my apartment. It was a Spanish copy of The Little Prince. Inside was written For Suzanne with the affection of your friend, the fox, who always feels responsible for you. I hope we’ll meet again someday. Alfonso. 1970.

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What are your seven treasures? If one of Suzanne’s brings to mind a special memory, please share your story below.

Explore more guest posts in the Seven Treasures series here.