Some things are sacred, and it is devastating, incomprehensible, heart wrenching to find them relegated to the profane through other peoples' ignorance.

Rose, David, and I did the Greenwood garage sale yesterday. The entire 10 block neighborhood set up their folding tables and priced their Barbie dolls for a new round of kids. We were standing at one table haggling over a plastic crane, when I spotted a bag of my generation Camp Fire beads. At first I was ecstatic because my beads are buried somewhere in the basement, and I had been trying to find one to give to Sandy and Chama for their blessing way ceremony (which I missed, dang it, but the poem got there I hope), and I thought I'd use one of these. But then I started talking to this woman and realized not only was she selling them, but she had no idea what they were. Someone had just given her daughter these colorful wooden beads to play with.

Oh no! Like a merit badge, Camp Fire beads represent effort, commitment, skills, dreams, and pride. Each color represents a different type of activity. Orange was for Home like "Describe the symptoms of shock. Demonstrate what to do for a person who is in shock." I got a lot of beads going through first aid courses. Red was for sports and games, like "learn a new game and teach it to a friend." When you got 10 of the small size, you earned a big one.

I used to pour through the bead book trying to find ones I had already earned or planning ones I wanted to earn. I was scrupulously honest about it. As a camp counselor one of our more onerous duties was going through the bead book at the end of the week figuring out what beads the kids had earned. It was tiresome but I never considered making it up or not bothering. I took beads seriously.

We wore them sewn into our ceremonial vests or strung on leather thongs from our ceremonial dresses. We can make a strong argument against the faux Indian nature of these garments and another strong argument against the whole extrinsic reward system these beads represent. It's all true, but I can't look at that bag of beads and not see a girl memorizing pressure points, learning to cook over a fire, learning to build a fire, picking up garbage, singing with her friends. I can't not see myself doing cross stitch samplers with Mrs. Richardson and walking carefully up the steps to Blue Heaven the path lined by girls holding flickering candles, my beads swaying against my gown.

When I was ten, my best friend's grandmother died. Grandma had been a Camp Fire girl and Zana and I inherited the beads. They came to me in a velvet bag. I still have them.

Ironically, yesterday I also went to a tea party honoring Addie's great grandma who had just died. She had tons and tons of jewelry and the twenty of us all took several pieces home. I didn't know Great Grandma. I don't know if she bought this spider pin with her first paycheck or if she wore it to a luncheon in her honor or if she regretted buying it but couldn't admit to herself she'd made a mistake.

It's the same problem. How do we honor and respect what a previous generation held dear? I don't know. But seeing those beads on a garage sale table made me feel invisible and heart broken. I told their story, and as I left, I heard the woman's daughters going through the beads telling each other the story.