During my morning meditation today I looked up at the top of my amoire and noticed that it was covered with various stuffed animals that my husband and friends have given me over the years. We’re talking a space that is crammed, packed and full. I started laughing to myself because when I was in my twenties, I had a collection of stuffed animals that I’d gathered through the years which burned up in a fire that gutted my apartment. I wasn’t laughing about the fire, but rather that, even today, people see me as the kind of person to give a stuffed animal.

For years I’d carried around the belief that I was this weird collector of stuffed animals person in my youth because not very many people I knew as a teenager had a collection like mine. Then to top it all off, a fire began because of one of those stuffed critters was toppled over by one of my cats into a space heater which destroyed the whole collection! Don’t worry, no real animals were hurt or perished in the fire! Yet, here I am again many years later with a whole other collection of stuffed animals and not one red cent has passed from my hands to a merchant to purchase them. I don’t even think I’ve told many people in the last decade or two about my previous collection of stuffed animals or my fire!

I have this huge collection of angels too. Every single room in my house has at least one kind of angel. I like angels, don’t get me wrong…but I have never bought an angel for myself nor have I told people that I’d like to have an angel collection. Yet, people keep giving them to me.

Then there’s the snow globe collection. What, oh what in my make-up can possibly make people think that I’m a snow globe kind of a person? Yet, we have a whole shelf in our living room dedicated to snow globes that people have given us over the years. At least they’re from all over the world….

I also have turtles and dolphins of all sort and sizes and one of my friends has decided to give me frogs as well. I never said, “oh I love to collect dolphins, turtles and frogs”. I just wonder what truths, if any, these things that people have given to me over the years reveal about me? Or them? Truly though my best frog is one that David gave me a few years back after his brother and he took a lark trip to Graceland. Yes, he brought me back a ceramic frog dressed like Elvis Presley (complete with a black porcelain wig on his head). I don’t think anyone can top that.

I don’t think of myself as a person with chotzkes all over their house, yet here I am with a whole lotta what may someday be defined as chotzkes.

The real truth about me is that I love animals of all kinds, I talk to angels all the time and I enjoy the whimsical side of life. Okay. So maybe some people have me pegged.

Oy vey. What truths does your environment say about you?