Does anyone remember trading cards? I think they were perhaps the female version of baseball cards, and were my passion in third and fourth grade. The initial investment was buying a pack of the cards, the size and shape of playing cards. On them were various pictures, but all I cared about were the pictures of horses. I must have not been the only one, as each pack of allowance-saved-for cards would limit the inclusion to one or two cards with any equestrian themes. The rest were useless renditions of what I remember as mostly flowers. Once one had the cards, the trading portion of the activity began. One would approach others with one’s collection of cards and trade for the ones that one wanted. My dream was to find someone who had tons of horse cards, and would take all my flower pictures in trade. I never found that ideal person, but not for want of trying.
The other hobby that I assiduously worked on was my stamp collection, a passion I shared with many of my friends. I remember the bathroom sink surrounded by drying stamps that had been soaked off of their envelopes, some new additions and some old that could be traded for hoped for items one did not have. There were also adults kindly arriving at the house with stamps they had saved for me, and occasionally a packet of pristine stamps received as a gift. I learned about history, geography and politics from those little colored squares, and also the joy of completing a set of presidential stamps with the longed-for one dollar stamp, an unimaginable sum in an age where a letter cost three cents to mail.
For a short time I collected figurines of horses (there is a theme here) and Nancy Drew books which I read assiduously as they continued to pour forth from Carolyn Keene, a pseudonym for a number of different writers.
But the greatest collection of my youth was one I was not even aware of gathering. It was the gift of the thoughts, conversations, and ideas that gently poured over me from three very different, but remarkable people --- my grandparents. They never lectured or postured, but simply lived their lives in an honorable, consistent, and path-marking way. As I grew to adulthood, I would often hear their words echoing down over the years long after they were gone. The trading cards have vanished, a casualty of other interests, the stamp collection has been given away, and Nancy Drew is a relic of the past. But the care of those three loving and honorable adults has continued to be the most valuable and enduring collection from my childhood.