One Little Seed

Matthew 13:31-32  (NRSV)

The Parable of the Mustard Seed:

31 He put before them another parable: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32 it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.”

She was tired from working all day, and did not want to give up her seat on the bus to go stand in the back, and with this simple act, she gave new life to a movement that became an unstoppable force to bring civil rights, justice, and respect to those who have been marginalized due to their race….a movement that continues today.

Before the Berlin Wall could come down, someone had to take the first swing, to make the first crack in the cement.

The #metoo movement began with a few woman who had enough and had the courage to speak out, until they were finally heard. The call for common-sense gun laws began with the cries of survivors, who did not want others to know their pain! The out-cry against the separation of families started with a few raised voices and grew into an orchestra calling for compassion.

Many big things have grown from small beginnings!

This is the lesson of the parable: that often, a small seed of an idea, planted by one lone voice, one bold move, can grow so strong that it has the power to change the world.

We can see this in the story of Jesus, a poor carpenter who left his home to share a message of God’s love and forgiveness. While he received a lot of ridicule, hatred and was eventually executed for his teachings, he also gained a small following, who continued to carry his message. As it was shared this message only grew more powerful, until it toppled an empire and spread to every corner of the world.

Today, Jesus’ message of love and forgiveness continues to sow new seeds of hope and change, even in the midst of our divisive world.

And these are the seeds that can lead us all to a better place than where we are now.

Face it, most of us are pretty tired of everything being an argument; even the closest of people will not always agree on everything…and that’s okay, no one is right all the time. This is where the seeds of love, sown by the Gospel of Christ have an opportunity to take root and flourish!

When we can begin to focus on the things that bring us together, rather than argue over what pulls us apart, we will see each other as human beings, and not just in terms of ideologies or political parties. This, in turn can break down the barriers between us, opening the way to acceptance and understanding, which will nurture these seeds and cause them to grow and sprout!

Nourished with kindness, these sprouts of hope will grow and spread out their branches, where there is room for us all (and our differing opinions), reminding us that we are all in this world together, and that we cannot thrive unless we work together to make our world a better place. For it is by listening to each other that new ideas are born, new seeds are planted, and we come closer together.

And it can all start with treating each other as members of the same family, we may not always agree, but we are all still connected.

Spirits in the Night

My parents used to have a glass of wine every night before bed.  It was almost ceremonial: At 11pm my mother would go to the kitchen and pour the wine into small glasses, while my dad would get the crackers and the cheese.  They would put the wine, crackers and cheese on a small tray and bring it back to the TV room where they would enjoy their wine and crackers while watching the news and the beginning of Johnny Carson, before heading up to bed.

They carried out this ritual almost every night, even when camping and on vacation, it must have had some deeper meaning for them, a way of remembering they were a couple, and more than just parents, for a little while.  I enjoyed those occasions when I was younger and got to have some of the cheese and crackers, and when older, I occasionally got to have some wine myself.

By the time I was in college, my mother had discovered a wine for their evening drink that she found both cheap and tasty…Thunderbird!  She would buy it by the case to get an even bigger discount, and store the cases in the basement.  Now, by this time I was well into my adventures with Alcoholism, and would drink almost anything I could get my hands on…but even I looked down on Thunderbird.  I would join in with my brothers and sister, making fun of our mother’s taste in wine, pointing out that this is what the winos drank on the streets of New York.  I considered it to be a last ditch drink of desperation: when there was nothing else, I knew I could always find Thunderbird at my parents’ house!

During the summer of 1983 I was living in an apartment down the block and around the corner from my house.  One hot August night, two of my friends and I were hanging out in the apartment listening to music, drinking beer and smoking pot.  We were bored, hungry and broke.  After sitting around trying to figure out what we could do to get food or to have some fun, I mentioned that my parents were out of town for a few days and that there was food at their house, and a color TV, so we all piled into my old Toyota Corolla and made the trip to my parents’ house…it took all of five minutes from sitting on the sofa at the apartment to going through the kitchen at my parents’ place.

After we got some food, we took it back to the living room to eat it; however, once the food was gone it didn’t take too long before we were bored again, and starting to sober up!  My friends asked if there was any booze in the house, but told them that my parents would know if I took anything out of the liquor cabinet (the bottles were old and dusty and they would notice the fingerprints – plus I suspected that my mother had all the levels memorized), besides there really wasn’t anything good in there any way, there were the remains of a few bottles of cheap whisky (Old Philadelphia, etc.) some liqueurs, and a few bottles of the  dandelion wine that my dad used to make in the basement.  So the liquor cabinet was a no go…however, there was the Thunderbird!  I did not want to take the bottle out of the fridge, my mother would have noticed that right away…but there were the two cases that she kept in the basement!

I went down into the basement, thinking I would get a bottle for each of us, and replace them when I got paid…before my folks were due back.  When I came back into the living room with three 2 liter bottles of Thunderbird, my friends were actually surprised…not only by the fact that my parents had Thunderbird, but that I thought we’d each drink a bottle!  My two buddies decided to split a bottle (which means I had to get glasses for them!) while I took one for myself.  During the evening, they were able to finish most of their bottle, while I had pounded down one bottle and then started on a second!

After that first bottle I was pretty well organized, and got caught up in conversation with my friends, while we sat in our big living room, listening to music, drinking, eating snacks and bullshitting.  We were in the midst of conversation, when we heard a loud “bang” on the second floor.

The house where I grew up had a big main hallway and a winding staircase that went up through the middle of the house, which gave it excellent acoustics, so we could easily hear any noises from upstairs.  The house was about 50 years old and had a lot of noises and creaks…and on occasion it seemed that a door previously left open was closed the next time I walked by…even if no one else was home.  And a couple of times the lights seemed to come on by themselves in the middle of the night.  Of course, remember that I was smoking a lot of pot back then, as well as drinking and doing several other drugs, so my perception may not be have been the best!  (However the night that someone knocked on my door at 3am, but no one was waiting in the hall, I was still in grade school and certainly not high then!)  I liked the idea that the house might be haunted, it was fun, and I even used to tell stories to my young nieces and nephews, who were amused and a little scared by the thought that there was a ghost in the house.

Thoughts of ghosts aside, that night, when we heard the noise upstairs, we were thinking of a more conventional intruder.  The neighborhood was not a good one, and the house had been broken into twice before.  In fact, one night a few months earlier (before I moved to the apartment) I came home late at night to see two guys, one on the other’s shoulders, trying to pry open one of the casement windows on the side of the house.  I was pretty wasted that night also…so I drove right at them, scraping the bricks and my car but missing them!  I chased them all the way up the driveway until they hopped the fence by the garage, and ran across the parking lot of the apartment building behind the house.

So thinking that the house might have been broken into, we went upstairs to find out where the noise had come from.  I wielded an empty Thunderbird bottle as a weapon, the last drops spilling down my arm as we went up the stairs in the dark.  Half way up, one of my friends asked why we didn’t turn the lights on, and I told him I was wondering the same thing, but there was not much we could do about it now.  So I continued to move up the stairs quietly (or as quietly as I could, being pretty drunk) and as I did, I listened for more sounds, but heard nothing.  Logic told me that the noise was probably caused by the wind, or maybe one of the cats knocked something over, after all what burglar would break into a house with three drunken guys in it, surely there must be easier houses to rob!  However, I was still anxious about going upstairs into the darkness!

At the top of the stairs I walked down the hall to turn on the lights, and we stood in front of the door to my parents’ room.  “I think the noise came from in here” I said, pointing into the darkness.  After a moment of hesitation, we walked in.  Once through the door, we were in a short hallway that led to the main part of the room.  I did think to turn on the light, and we proceeded down the short hallway.  The first thing we noticed was that it was cool in the room, even though it was a warm, humid night.  That gave us a chill that was deeper than the temperature.

At the end of the hall was a small dressing room.  That room always gave me the creeps, ever since I was a kid, but I’m not really sure why, perhaps because it was so small and I hate tight places.  When we walked into this room and turned on the light, everything seemed normal, my mother’s sewing machine sat near the window, and the left side of the wall was lined with closet doors.  The room looked the same as usual, but it was cold, I swear I could see my breath!  Although I should have felt pretty drunk after a bottle of Thunderbird, standing in that room seemed to sober me up right away! The hairs stood up on the back of my neck and I felt like I did not want to stand in that room any longer, none of us did…so we backed out and went into the big part of the bedroom.  There were French doors on the left side of the room, which led out onto a porch that we never used; the rest of the room was very ordinary, just big.  There were several dressers, an old four poster bed, and a couple of night stands.  At the far end of the room was a bathroom, shared with the smaller room next door.  The room felt empty but not as creepy or as cold as the dressing room.  We searched my parents’ room, the bathroom and the next room and then all the other rooms, and of course we found nothing.

We then searched the down stairs and basement and there was no sign of an intruder in the house.  By this time we had calmed down and were able to convince ourselves that it was the Thunderbird and the pot that had given us the creeps…of course that did not stop us from continuing to drink and smoke that night!  And that’s just what we proceeded to do!

I wheeled the TV out of the den and into the room so we could hang out and watch TV, but soon the show was forgotten as we got to drinking more Thunderbird and telling ghost stories.  I told my friends about some of the unusual things I had noticed in the house in the past, and they told me stories of their own.  As we shared these stories the mood grew creepier, of course, but it was fun…until we heard another noise coming from upstairs!  First there was a creak…when we heard it we all looked at each other.  “Was that the dog?” asked one of my friends.  I just pointed to the dog, lying there on the floor in the big hall main hallway.  It was looking up toward the stairs…it had heard the noise too.  “Maybe that was just one of your cats?”  I was asked.  I was about to nod my head in agreement, when we heard the sound of a door slamming upstairs!  We jumped up right away, and ran to the stairs.  The lights were out in the stairway, although I thought that I had left them on!

I turned the lights back on, and we ran up the stairs.  One of my friends started yelling “We heard you up there, you picked the wrong house tonight!”  We sounded tough, but we were all nervous because we were full of ghost stories and Thunderbird; and although we had just searched the whole house, we were still not sure if we were really alone!

When we got to the top of the stairs, we saw that the door to my parents’ room was shut, although I swear I had left it open!  Once again we stood in front of my parents’ room.  We stared at the closed door feeling dread that was not there when we first looked down the dark hallway.  Anything could be behind that door!  I took a breath and then pushed the door open, forcefully, banging it against the wall, and I yelled something like “You better get out of here now!”  Of course there was no reply.  I turned on the lights and ran into the room, but there was no one there.  We searched the rest of the second floor again, even looking up into the attic (though we did not actually go up there), and then we went back down the stairs and searched the rest of the house, including the basement, and we found no one.  The house was safe and secure, and we were seriously freaked out!

We went back to the living room and immediately felt uncomfortable, as if we were no longer alone in the room.  One of my friends looked at a half empty bottle of Thunderbird and said “This stuff is fucked up, I’m not touching this again!”  We all laughed, but it was with some effort.  We were still upset, even the dog looked spooked!  As we stood there wondering what to do next we heard the sound of a door slamming upstairs again!

This time we froze!  We did not yell or search the house again.  We knew there were no burglars.  We did not know what was making the noises, or slamming the doors.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up, my two friends thought that it was time for us to leave.  I thought they had a good idea, but I felt some responsibility to my parents, and I just had to know…so before we left, I went back upstairs alone.  It felt cooler up there, and creepier.  I made it half way up the stairs and saw that my parents’ door was still open.  Nothing looked out of place, but nothing felt right.  Then, as I stood there on the landing, I felt like someone was looking down at me from the darkness in the doorway of my parents’ room.  I turned and quickly ran back down stairs, and found my friends waiting for me in the living room, getting ready to go.

Just then, I had a moment of clarity, and said “We’re just letting our imaginations get the better of us, right?”  My friends agreed, saying it was just the pot and the Thunderbird that was messing with us…but they still wanted to leave.  I was not sure…after all I had a whole house to myself, and could sleep in my own bed and not on the mattress on the floor in the apartment.  I had just about convinced myself that I was just drunk and being silly, when the chair in the corner of the room seemed to rock, ever so slightly.  When I looked at the chair, the cushions seemed to be depressed as if someone was sitting in it!  One of my buddies even commented on it: “Who’s sitting in that chair?” That was when I gave up, and said “I think you’re right, it’s time to go!”  With that we all ran out of the house and into the car!

As I backed out of the driveway, and pulled out into the street, both of my friends told me to stop and look, as they pointed to the big bay windows that looked in on the living room.  There, in the window was a figure, it looked like a woman dressed in blue, with a white scarf on her head but her face was not clear!  We all saw it at the same time, and it gave me a deep chill that I can still feel today.  “Let’s get out of here!” one of my friends said from the back seat, and I did not have to be told twice, as I took off down the block and returned to the hot, cramped apartment!  We were shook up but did not really talk about what we had seen, other than asking each other “Did we really see that?”  Eventually we managed to go to sleep…or more honestly…pass out.

The next day, nursing a nasty hangover, I went back to the house, I still got a creepy feeling, but I felt braver in the daylight.  So I went in and I fed the dog and the cats, and cleaned up our mess from the night before.  Everything looked fine, no one had broken into the house and nothing was out of place, but I still felt like I wasn’t alone.  In the light of day, with the house cleaned, and myself sober (for the moment) it was easy to believe that the only spirits in the house the night before were in the bottles of Thunderbird we drank!  Thinking more clearly, I realized that there was a good chance that my friends saw how drunk I was, and were just playing off of my fears and over active imagination.  All this is possible, and probable.  Alcohol has turned out not to be my friend in the long run, and Thunderbird was not the best stuff I could have been drinking, so it is easy to believe that my imagination had just run away with me.

I moved back home that fall, when school started again, and we lived there for another three years, and I spent many nights there alone, and I never saw anything else like I did that night. There were a few small incidents that made me wonder, but nothing that couldn’t be easily written off to my overactive imagination.

Logic tells me that what I heard and saw that night were fueled but Thunderbird, but still I cannot get that imagine out of mind, of that figure in blue, standing by the window, and I wonder!

The Treasure

George was a proud Navy man.  He had shipped out early in the war, and served in both the Atlantic and the Pacific; he even survived having his ship sunk by a torpedo during the landing at Normandy.  Now, the war was just about over; the Empire of Japan had surrendered after the attacks in Nagasaki and Hiroshima.

George’s ship was cruising the South Pacific, and was sent to investigate a small atoll that was recently evacuated by Japanese forces, and was supposed to be deserted.  With his ship at anchor, George went ashore with a landing party that was lightly armed, as this was to be a simple reconnaissance mission.

The small rubber raft rode the surf onto the beach, the waves leaving it high up on the sand, George and his shipmates climbed out and onto the shore.  After months on the ship, they were glad to feel solid ground under their feet, and stood for a moment listening to the sound of surf crashing and the palm trees rustling in the sea breeze.  The atoll was tiny, and it took the group only a few minutes to walk to the widest part of the island, where there was a radio shack and a high tower, which the Japanese used to watch for approaching ships and planes.  Now the site appeared empty, the roof on the tower was half gone, and the remainder was banging in the breeze.  The radio shack was still intact though; however, it was closed up tight and looked abandoned.

The men were talking loudly amongst themselves, laughing and enjoying their day on the island in the sun.  One of the men walked up to the shack and was about to kick the door in, “I hope the former occupants left some good souvenirs behind!” He said, raising his foot to kick.  Just then, George noticed that the blinds were moving a little, even though there was still glass in the closed windows!  Without a thought for himself, George dove at the sailor who was standing in front of the door, and tackled him just as gunfire exploded through the door! If he had still been standing there, the sailor would have been shredded, but he was saved by George’s quick action!

But George wasn’t finished, while he was still rolling on the ground; he had pulled a grenade off of his belt, and tossed it in through the hole that had appeared in the front door of the shack, yelling “Fire in the hole!  All the sailors ducked for cover as the grenade went off and the windows blew out of the shack.  As the smoke cleared, George jumped up and yelled “Let’s get ‘em!” as he led the squad into the shack, where they found two dead Japanese soldiers.  After making sure that there were no more survivors, the team searched the shack.  The radio equipment had been destroyed, and as they sifted through a pile of ashes and scraps on the floor, it become clear that the Japanese had burned their files and paperwork.

Just when it looked like the group would find nothing of any value in the shack, George noticed a loose board in the floor, pulling it up, he found a metal lockbox.  The sailors all gathered around as George and another man pried the box open.  After a few minutes the lock broke, and the box creaked open. When the men saw what was inside, they let out a collective gasp!

There, in the box were twenty gold bars, each with the imprint of the Emperor of Japan.  In addition to the gold, there were diamonds and rubies along with a stack of Japanese Yen.  “Wow, what should we do with this?” asked one of the sailors.  “I guess we should turn it in to our C.P.O.” said George; but the other men rejected this idea, “Nah, he would just take it for himself, and then charge us with looting!”  “So what do we do?” asked George.  After some discussion, the five men decided to bury the treasure on the island, and come back for it after the war was over; then each man would get one gold bar, and the rest of the treasure would be stored in a safe place until there was only one man left alive, and then he would take possession of rest of the treasure.

All the sailors agreed on the plan to form a Tontine, and they buried the box under a palm tree in an old ammunition crate.  They noted the location of the island on a map, and then returned to their ship, on the rubber raft.  Within a few weeks, they arrived back home in San Francisco, and four of them were discharged from the Navy right away.  The five men said their goodbyes and headed to their homes and families, but knew they would all stay in touch.

Once back home, the men used their gold to buy houses and start families.  The years went by, and life moved on for the five men, then in 1952 one of the former sailors was killed saving a child from a house fire; this event prompted the four survivors to get in touch with each other.  After a few phone calls and letters, it was decided that it was time to retrieve their box of treasure and keep it in a safe place.

The four men made arrangements to meet in San Francisco, where one of the men, now a successful businessman, rented a plane to fly the group to the Marshal Islands; from there they would take a boat trip to the small atoll, where their treasure was buried.

The trip took three days, and when they hit the beach on the atoll, the men found it pretty much the same as they had left it.  The only thing that had changed was that the observation tower had fallen over in one of the tropical storms.  The palm tree was still there, and when they dug, so was the ammunition box which held their treasure!

The group decided that it would be best to let George keep the box for them, as he was the one who had saved their lives on the island, and had proven to be the most trustworthy.  At first he was reluctant, but finally agreed to take the box with him and hide it on his property, back in Pennsylvania. Afraid to take the treasure on an airplane home, George decided to rent a car to drive home from San Francisco, making the trip in just three days and arriving home late at night.  Although he was tired, the first thing he did was take the treasure box out of the trunk, and he hid it in the small space underneath the smoke house, where he cured meat from the hogs he raised.  Once the treasure was buried, George went to bed, and slept soundly.

Years went by, as George and his wife struggled to raise their family.  Money was often tight, but George never thought of taking the treasure for his own, even though he had lost track of his old friends. Eventually their kids grew up and moved away and started lives of their own.  There was some sadness with the loss of a daughter, but also much joy with the arrival of grandchildren.  Then, a few years after he retired, George got some bad news from the doctor, and he knew he had to do something with the treasure to keep it safe.

George called his daughter, and asked her to come to his house.  She drove over to see him, concerned.  When she got there, she found him in his favorite spot, in the basement, where he liked to watch baseball on TV.  She pulled up an old barstool next to his chair and listened while George told her about his medical condition. When she heard the news she was upset and started crying, but after a while she calmed enough so that he could tell her the story of the treasure and the Tontine.  She was not sure if she could believe such a wild story, but when he teased her in the past, he could not suppress the mischievous smile that always let her know he was joking; this time however, he remained serious.

George then asked for his daughter’s help to search for the names of the members of the Tontine on the internet and find out who was left.  She agreed and went home to use her computer.  After doing a quick search, she found that two of the men in the Tontine were still alive.  When George’s daughter called to tell him the news, he asked her to keep something safe for him. “What is it dad?” she asked cautiously.   George got quiet for a moment, and then said, at just above a whisper: “The treasure!”

Two days later, while her mom was out, George called his daughter and asked her to come over. Overwhelmed by curiosity, she drove over right away.  It was a warm spring evening but still light, and George met his daughter outside. Saying “Come with me!” he led her across the lawn to the smokehouse. It was little more than a small shed, and had not been used for years, but still smelled like smoked pork.  The scent stirred up memories of childhood for George’s daughter, but her revelry was cut short, as George reached down and started pulling up floorboards.  When he was done, he pointed into the hole and told his daughter “Here is the treasure; I need you to take it and hide it for me, until there is only one man left in the Tontine; when that happens, get in touch with him and let him know the treasure is his.”  Then he reached down and opened the box, to reveal the gold bars, money and jewels, still safely in their place.

His daughter didn’t know what to say, and just stood there gasping.  “I can’t lift this on my own, please help me with it.” said George.  Together they each grabbed a handle and lifted the box out of the ground.  It was very heavy, and it took a long time for George and his daughter to get it to her SUV.  Once loaded onto the truck, they got in and drove to her house, where they planned on burying the treasure underneath her backyard shed.

It took them almost another hour, but they finally got the treasure buried, and George’s daughter promised never to tell the story of the Tontine or the treasure to anyone until the last man was finally given his treasure.

During the following summer and fall, George’s health failed, but the warmth of his smile never faded.  At the end, as they said goodbye for the last time, George’s daughter promised to keep his treasure a secret.  George heard this, and smiled, telling her “it’s no secret that YOU are my real treasure.”  His daughter smiled again, and a tear rolled down her cheek.

George died early the next morning, peacefully in his sleep.

It was almost two years later, and his daughter had not touched the treasure, being true to her father’s wishes.  It is not that she couldn’t have used the money, as she struggled through a period of unemployment; but she knew that the treasure was not hers to take.  Then, one day she received the email notification she had been waiting for.  The Tontine was finished, there was now only one member left.  She waited a few days, and then she sent an email to the last surviving member of the Tontine.  In the email she explained that she was George’s daughter, and that she knew about the treasure and the agreement.  Then she told him that he could come at any time to get what was now his.

It took a few weeks for the man to respond, so long that she was wondering if he too had passed away.  Then, one evening in November, there was a knock on the door.  George’s daughter went to answer it, and found an elderly gentleman standing there, with a big smile on his face.  When she said “Hello?” he introduced himself as the last member of the Tontine.  Flustered, George’s daughter didn’t know what to say, but invited the man into her home.  She got him some coffee and then sat down next to him on the sofa.  “So, I guess you want to see it?” she asked.  The man smiled, and said, “Yes, it has been so long, do you have the box here?”  George’s daughter nodded and then sent her son out to the shed, to get the treasure box, which she had dug up and placed under a tarp.

A few minutes later, her son came back, “I can’t find it!” he told her.  Frustrated, she got up, telling the man “I’ll be right back.” She went to the shed with her son, showed him where the treasure was and together they carried back the treasure box, and set in on the dining room table for the man to open.

The elderly man smiled, and ran his hands over the box, which he had last held as a young sailor.  He thought of the men who were with him on that day, and he began to quietly weep.  After a few moments, he collected himself and told George’s daughter about when they found the treasure and formed the Tontine, and the bravery and honor that her father displayed that day, as he saved their lives from the Japanese soldiers.  Now, it was her turn to weep, as she remembered her father, and thought about how he never told anyone that he was a hero.

When she had stopped crying the man said “I guess it’s time.” And with George’s daughter and grandson watching, he reached down and opened the box.  They all gasped as the lid swung open the treasure was revealed!  The man thanked them both, and told George’s daughter “I can see you inherited George’s sense of honor, not a single piece is missing!”

After visiting with George’s daughter and grandson for a little while longer, the man said he had to go, and with the boy’s help, he took the treasure box to his car, bid the well, and drove away.

“All that gold, and we kept it for so long, at least he could have given us a gold bar or a ruby or something!” said George’s grandson.  The boy’s mother was thinking the same thing, but knew that she was right not to take anything for herself, and told her son “The treasure wasn’t ours, it wasn’t even grand-pop’s; they just let him keep it for them…because they knew what a good man he was.”  “It doesn’t seem fair.” her son said.  “No, maybe not, but grand-pop wouldn’t have wanted us to take what wasn’t ours.”

A few weeks later, George’s daughter came home from work, to find that her son had found a FedEx package on the front doorstep.  “It’s really heavy, but I brought it in!”  He told her.  “Thank you, now let’s see what it is!” answered his mom.

George’s daughter walked over to the FedEx package, and picked it up. Her son was right, it was heavy!  She picked up a pair of scissors, and cut through the tape that sealed the box, and pulled the flaps open.  There inside was the treasure box!!  There was also a note attached, from the old sailor who had visited her house weeks before.  “I realized that this treasure was more than I needed, and that you and your father earned a share by keeping it safe all these years.  So please accept this with my gratitude, in honor of your father’s service to us all.”  Tears fell onto the note, as George’s daughter read it over again.  “Mom, what is it?” asked her son.

She did not answer, but motioned for him to come over, and together they lifted the treasure box and set it down on the dining room table.  Then she reached own and opened it.  There inside were ten of the gold bars, and several of the jewels!  After all this time, the treasure shone on, just like the love she had for her dad, and she knew that this was a gift from him, and that he was still looking after her.