A couple years ago I was sitting with my sister on her lovely screened-in patio, listening to her brand new high quality wind chimes as a gentle breeze created a lovely song. She bought these chimes because the individual tones play “Amazing Grace”  if conditions are just right. But really, the sound is so pure and lovely regardless of how the breeze is moving the chimes. 

When I arrived back at my home, I kept thinking about those chimes. My sister had told me the brand name. And where she bought them.  I’m the type of shopper who can walk through stores, adding things to the shopping cart, continuing on through the store while thinking about the price of everything in the cart, and then going back through the store placing all the items back on the shelves where I found them. Do you do that, too? Please. Someone say yes.

The days passed and I stopped thinking about the chimes and moved on to other stuff like cute coffee cups and new plants for the yard.

And of course at my age, birds. Do you enjoy watching birds, feeding birds, hearing their songs? Well, I do. So does my husband. Our backyard birds are well fed. 

We keep our bird feed in our downstairs enclosed patio. A few months ago when I went down to get a bucket of bird food, I heard a gentle sound of chimes. It’s never windy in that patio so I never hear any chime type noises down there. 

I looked up and saw some chimes hanging there. Memories flooded my mind and heart.

My two sweet daughters had gifted me with wind chimes close to thirty years ago. My youngest daughter even wrote a sweet poem about how those chimes could fill our quiet empty nest home with sounds to remind us of the days when our home was filled with sounds of children and happy times. The music of living. ♥️

I framed the poem. I hung the chimes. I cherished my daughters’ gift. They knew my heart missed them a lot. They know how prone to tears I am.  Both of the girls were in college at the time and money was very tight. It was a sacrifice for them to scrape up the funds to purchase these chimes. 

But thirteen years later after moving to a different home, the chimes had been relegated to the lower patio we never used. The poem was hung in the seldom-used basement room on the other side of the hanging chimes. 

The precious chimes became overlooked. Well, until the above mentioned day. 

I stood there and looked at them for a bit and noticed that they seemed fairly similar to my sister’s chimes. Same shape and size of wind sail and clapper. And the heavy steel tubes looked quite similar. They were pretty dirty and unkempt. But DeWayne and I decided to take them down and move them to our upper deck where we spend a lot of time. 

Once they were in my hands I made a striking discovery. Those chimes are an exact match to my sister’s. 😲

Same brand, same exact tones. Just thirty years older. 

Last week here in the South of Kansas we were blessed with unseasonably beautiful temperatures for March. The comfy deck furniture lured me out there for my first “summer sanctuary” time in the year 2026. This porch is quite sheltered from the typical wind directions but there was just enough breeze that day for the newly re-discovered chimes to create an ethereal song to fill my soul. Music therapy for sure. Brought me a smile and happy memories. 

There’s undoubtedly a lesson for me somewhere in this story. 

The chimes were an overlooked treasure. But the real treasure is the love of my two daughters. That is a treasure I don’t ever want to overlook or take for granted. 

You might want to look around, maybe you’ll find your own overlooked treasures. They might be living, breathing and looking right back into your eyes. 

Various porch settings, and some of my very best treasures…..❤️