Wish Oyster Pearl

One year the gift my father brought home from overseas for us girls was a Wish Oyster Pearl in a can. Mom being mom, and needing order, took the cans from us after giving us each a guarded one minute tour with our eyes of the can. She then put them up in the highest cabinet in the kitchen for safe keeping. A kitchen is where such items belong and up high for safe keeping might have been mom's way of letting dad know she understood the value of what he had given us.

Being in the Navy we moved a lot. I remember watching those cans come down and find new hiding places in high kitchen cabinets over the years. Never taking the cans down long enough for us to read the words or touch the cans or talk about the cans and what was inside. What was an oyster anyway I wondered. All I knew is it was something in a can that dad brought home and mom keeps it up high so it must be very very special.

The can held an oyster. Inside the oyster was a guaranteed pearl. Might even be you would open your oyster and find a black pearl. Now that would be a treasure indeed.

When I was of age, I was given my can for safe keeping. It was really a fitting symbol of my dad. A can holding a product I knew little about. An oyster, that once held life, held onto a treasure, a pearl, inside. You had to pry open it's shell to get to the treasure inside and might take a chance of breaking the shell of the oyster.

I don't think dad knew how to give up the pearl he held on to for all of those years. The longer he held onto it, the harder it was to find a place to start. The tighter the grip. Until one day it didn't matter. He was gone and so was the gift he held inside.