On my eighth birthday I received a very special present. It was a conch shell. The conical shape was topped with a spiralled cap, studded with points of rough, glittering lime. Lined with pink mother-of-pearl, the opening was cool and polished as the finest marble. I remember how I loved to hold that bit of nature�s sculpture to my ear, feel the smooth coolness against my cheek, and listen to the rolling whisper that everyone told me was the ocean.

The shell became my prized possession. One day some months later my little brother, just beginning school, began to eye it longingly. Tomorrow was his show-and-tell day and he yearned to display it to his class. As I debated, his large brown eyes pleaded. I had entrusted my possessions to him before and, as younger brothers sometimes do, he had often lost or broken them. But he was my little brother. I set the shell in his tender grasp with admonitions to take care of it. Triumphantly, next day, he returned it safe and sound.

And do you know something? It was even more beautiful than when I had given it to him. I had risked a part of myself by trusting one I loved�the difficult kind of love which means sacrifice and peril. My charity was as small as the child I was. Yet I had learned the priceless truth that what we share becomes most truly ours.

 �Mark A. Macho