The Meanings We Assign to Things
I've been boxing up some of the kids' things-
Riley's LEGOs, Annie's books- and I guess
it surprises me what they leave behind,
the toys they played with, the stories
they read, the gifts they were so excited
to open years, even a decade, ago. To me,
they seem monumental, these plastic bricks
and worn pages, physical representatives
of events I easily commemorate in strange
moments like these, when we are cleaning
out closets or rearranging rooms, and I
find myself paralyzed with indecision.
What am I going to do with these great
monoliths, these talismans and relics?
Shouldn't I expect the kids to carry
their histories with them into the world?
Or is our home to become a museum?
And one can't help but wonder in these
situations if somehow the divorce
had something to do with this, that maybe
the kids learned an early lesson to distrust
attachments or to better tolerate transience
or to expect impermanence and travel light.
And probably none of this is true since
we've all left toys and books behind us
while carrying other totems forward
for a time, and who can explain
the strange magic we use to choose
the items that will contain our souls?
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