By Elder Blue Black TeamBy Elder Blue Black TeamHermina Popa (Romania), Efthymia Filippaki(Greece)

Evi Tarro(Estonia), Athanasia Papachristou(Greece), Emanuela Leto(Italia)

CREATIVE WRITING IN ETWINNING- A HANDS ON EXPERIENCE

This is a story about life. We wrote a story about stuffs with sentimental value that we collect in our life.

The Team

This Friday evening Maria is alone. All her friends have gone for weekend holidays. It would be perfect for her to spend these two days in

the small white house at the edge of the sea.

The house belonged to her grandmother. But now it is hers.On Saturday, after two hours driving, she arrives there. She opens the door. So much dust!

After her grandmother passed away and for three years it was closed. She decides to start cleaning from the bedroom. Suddenly she looks at it.

A small mysterious green box on the wooden table in the corner. She opens it. Some strange things inside it.

A shell !!! What does it really means! Last week she read the excellent book “The shell seekers” . Now she has a shell in her hands. A shell from the sea.

Her gaze falls on the opposite wall. An old picture. Summer days. A smiling boy and a girl on the hot sand next to the sea. A shell on her hands.  

Her grandpa and grandma. And a shell. Was it his first gift to her? Was this the first gift in a common life full of love, which stayed alive for more than sixty years?

Her grandma! How much Maria loved her! So many memories... Words, songs, fairytailes from her lips... Everything is coming to her mind this lonely morning.

...Hmm ... All things have her smell. l feel washed over in happy memories.

I would like to know what is the meaning for her each object. I remember the ring.I keep asking myself...Why grandma put in that box only six things...and why those things?.

What's meant to her?.Very strange...I think "six" is the key. If I could have a clue what is "six" for her...

And painkillers... why? O...my god..I know.. Her sister, Ana suicided with pills ... That's it... She put in a box for each of us, one thing .For me, the hairbrush.

I remember how she brushed my hair every evening when I was

little girl. We shared special moments. She used to sing a song... an old song about love... Uf… I cannot remember the lyrics… but I remember how I liked my hair brush.

The diamond ring...has to be for my grandpa... Grandfather gave her this ring when he asked her to marry him. He proposed to her  at dinner.

I remember how she told us that he was so nervous that he almost dropped the ring on the floor. Oooo..my brother's silver spoon ... when he was little, he never ate without his favorite spoon.

A Shell... I know ...is for my mother. She loves to collect shells since she was little girl. She and

my grandma, used to go on the beach all the time.

But what could this small seal statue possible mean? Why her grandmother had included this into her favourite objects in this box? She had never seen it before.

Who gave it to her and why?She grabbed the small statue with great care and she started examining it.

She noticed some engraved letters at the bottom. The letters had almost worn-out by the time… "To Maria, my only truly love...“

What could this mean? If this was a gift of my grandfather.I would know it. My grandmother should had talked about this...

O...grandma... you kept and treasured all these feelings. We collect things because they represent aspects of our lives – extensions of our

personality, physical reminders of places we’ve been, dreams we wish to achieve.

But mostly, because they are feeling, experiences that we have lived and cherish them, memories.

So, I realized quite a few things about memories and possessions during the entire experience.

We are not our stuff. We are more than our possessions.

The end