We’re almost finished clearing out my parents’ house in Kahala. The only thing that remains now are a couple of boxes of old paint, insecticides, and other poisons that have to be disposed of properly, and a bag of cans and bottles for recycling, and empty cardboard boxes to be thrown away.

But in one of the last piles of trash, or what I thought was trash, another treasure emerged. There was a small box, old clippings, some dead pens. And this.

It doesn’t look like much. A small bell, with a plastic ring on top where it once would hang on something.

Why did she save this? I stared at it for a long minute or two. And then it hit me.

It’s a bell from the wooden playpen where my parakeet, Jimmy, used to while away the hours. There was a mirror, a ladder, several perches, and a bell. This bell, I’m pretty sure.

Jimmy met a sad end, in an accident involving my best friend, Larry, from across the street.

And my mom later put this bell aside, it seems, hoping that it might bring back memories at some point in the future.

More than a half-century later, she succeeded.