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January, 2005:
in praise of little things
Rather naturally, the vast majority of the objects that receive
their brief moment in cyberspace within the framework of this project
are small objects - the sort of items that kids become attached
to, search for frantically when they're misplaced, and then forget;
objects that accumulate along with countless others on a shelf,
and then get placed in a box or a bag and stuffed into a closet;
objects that suddenly materialize after many years during which
we completely forgot their existence. This can, of course, happen
with large objects as well, but misplacing the smaller ones is so
much simpler.
Almost daily new toys enter our house - prizes received at parties,
presents for birthdays, toys that come along with meals we'd have
preferred not to have purchased, and lots more. They enter almost
daily, but they very seldom seem to leave. In our efforts to clean
out as much as possible in order to move as little as possible during
our remodeling, we asked the kids to part with as many of these
tzotzkes as possible. Somewhat to my surprise, they did.
Of course there are also items that even when the kids are willing
to part with them, adults (or at least this particular adult) still
hesitate on the way to the trash. It's not that these might one day
be valuable (though that might happen) but that the carry more than
a small amount of sociological interest. It's a fair guess that somebody
is going to be interested in these one day, so why not hold onto them
for that yet unidentified someone.
While the kids were agreeing
to part with a large selection of objects, I was discovering a number
of items which I'd forgotten, or didn't even know I had. And as
is to be expected, even though had I never found them, I wouldn't
have missed them, once they'd been found, parting with them was
far from easy.
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