A souvenir glass from a Brickskeller beer tasting, German Doppelbocks, the same night America bombed Iraq. Operation Desert Storm, they called it, but I didn’t know this until the morning paper arrived. Still wet from my shower as I primped to head out for the night, I saw on TV that the attack had started. I called Joe. “Hey, are you still going?” The next morning at work, our receptionist almost shouted into the phone: “No mom, don’t cancel your dentist appointment. You can’t stop living your life.” War was new to us then.
A forgotten spring, oversized and painted black, rust shows through. Unique, therefore special. A remnant of a sleeper sofa? A murphy bed? A worthless treasure like my wooden dice from Williamsburg, my commemorative aluminum coins from the Munich Olympics, or my hacky sack from college. Those things I never threw away, I should have thrown away, now I can’t throw them away.
A pair of silent movies on eight-millimeter film—the Keystone Cops and Laurel and Hardy. I watched them with my dad’s dinosaur projector, already an antique when I was born. We watched family home movies as well, projected on the wall above the mantel, forwards and then backwards. Our day at Great Falls scrambling rocks; our trip to the New Hampshire where I threw a snowball at my father with the camera running; endless tricycle circles around the flat part of our Connecticut driveway. My brother paid to transfer these movies to VHS in the nineties. That tape is as unwatchable today as the films were when he transferred them.
A cookie tin filled with buffalo nickels, a gift from my grandmother. Her addition to my aspiring coin collection, started in envy of a friend’s. Ghost buffalos so worn down they appear transparent. All the dates rubbed away. “Now you can go sell them or whatever it is you do,” she said. As it turns out, coins without dates are worthless.
A Washinton Senators baseball received at the gate on Baseball Giveaway Day. Mine tucked safely, for years, in a bureau drawer and ultimately this box. My brother autographed his with his own name. I always wondered if he regretted that.
The punk rock lapel pins that once adorned my leather jacket—Sex Pistols, Dead Kennedys, Commander Salamander, Gumby. My father drove me over the DC line to the headshop where I bought that jacket to make sure I didn’t get taken (his word). The register guy, scraggly and missing an eye, but probably only in my memory, said with a straight face “It’s a little big, but you’ll want some extra room for a sweater under there when you’re riding your motorcycle.” Three years later, that coat saved my skin when I tumbled off my skateboard bombing down a hill.
Winnie-the-Pooh, matted, stained, misshapen from decades crammed in a box with my other crap: a pewter mug engraved with my name, scratched out and rewritten with a slur; suit buttons marked with my college logo, never sewn on a coat—an incomplete gift from my parents; the dude-beads I wore when I got my first tattoo, living on a high, when anything was possible; the framed photo of me finishing the Army 10-Miler, the fastest pace I ever ran anything; the metal wings I traded for with a biker a few minutes before a fight cleared out the bar for the night; a ceramic beer stein from the Red Garter, the strip joint where Brian and I ended our Fells Point bar crawls—everyone, including the dancers, forty years our senior.
After all these decades, Winnie-the-Pooh still wears a serene smile. My smile faded a moment after I opened the box. It’s hard to imagine why I decided to keep most of this junk.
Written to the prompt “A forgotten spring…” and inspired by Georgia Kreiger’s Put the Person on the Page with a Collage Essay.
The Other Stuff 
Jeff, reading your post, I was immediately reminded of the psychological theory of transitional objects. While this theory generally applies to children, it’s clear that it also has significant relevance for adults. Donald W. Winnicott, a British pediatrician and psychoanalyst, extensively explored this concept. He described transitional objects as materials or objects, often soft and cuddly like blankets or stuffed animals, to which a child becomes emotionally attached. These objects emerge as critical components in the developmental journey from the primary attachment to the caregiver to the broader engagement with the world.
I find myself deeply connected to this theory, as I have some transitional objects of my own. For instance, I’ve kept my childhood stuffed animals from when I was a little girl, including a frog now sporting a button eye, a quirky repair my mother made, and a Lion whose fur has matted into what resembles dreadlocks. These beloved items have journeyed with me into adulthood, each carrying a piece of my past.
Recently, I made the poignant decision to sell my childhood home in New York City. Yet, I’ve retained a framed piece of the hallway wallpaper, which was bright red with black felt used to create a flowered pattern, and the old house number plaque. These objects, seemingly mundane and meaningless to others, are invaluable to me. They serve as the only tangible pieces of my past, embodying memories and emotions I hold dear.
Your post has sparked a profound reflection on how these objects play a continuous role in our lives, offering comfort and a sense of identity. Thank you for the insight and for prompting such a meaningful introspection. 🙂
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Hi Thomas, I’m glad this resonated with you and hit an area of interest. Yes, I think I was quite susceptible to the draw of transitional items when I was a kid. It’s funny now, because I’m really the opposite, always wanting to get rid of things while my kids say ‘no keep it’. I’ve had bouts of pretty bad OCD throughout my life, especially as a tween and teen which is when I latched onto many of these items.
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Wow, this is beautiful.
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Thank you Georgia.
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Your reference to 8mm film reminds me of home movies with the family 16mm Bell & Howell. Without fail, a burn mark would start to appear on the image at a critical moment and the movie would grind to a halt. We’d all groan while Dad tried to splice the film – we had a stone age splicer too – as quickly as possible, fingers crossed for a smooth run until the credits rolled.
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Strangely, I don’t recall any film fires with our home movie setup, but we must have had some, right? Digital video certainly has some advantages.
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Great imagery, Jeff. Each item tells a story. No doubt those that seem insignificant now weren’t when you collected them.
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Thanks Mark. In an earlier comment, I note how whatever was in me to make me want to save items like these is long gone. And now that I’ve captured these memories in writing, I’ll probably want to ditch this stuff. Susan will intervene.
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I get it. I’m pretty sentimental. But I also haven’t miss some of the items and experiences Tom and I left behind in Chicago since I’ve written so much about them.
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First, a short story about my first wife who has no sentimentality for resting or retired objects.
Walking past the local Op shop (Thrift store) after work, I spotted a coffee pot and cup set. Entering the house, I said, ‘You’d never guess what I saw in the Op shop – a coffee set just like the one Aunty Barbara gave us for our wedding.’…
Silence, red-faced silence.
Ah well. Nevermind.
~
Now, a rhetorical question:-
Does anyone want a copy of my 1983 article on the use of longitudinal data collection methods for analysing consumer behaviour, published in a newsletter from the Victorian branch of the Australian Market Research Society?
Thought not.
~
Jeff, I read your post as a timely call to get tough on my memorabilia – it’s mostly time tarnished transitional trash. (Thanks for this handy construct Thomas Slatin).
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This is just plain lovely. And a superb response to the prompt. What a treat to open this on this serenely bright day in my hometown, where I felt nothing but gloomy, for no reason whatsoever. Reading and writing does that. Cheers me up. Especially yours.
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Well, I was feeling somewhat gloomy too, but your comment has really brightened my day. Thank goodness because the weather has been shite all week.
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I loved this and it made me think if my mom serving in Desert Storm/ Desert Shield. I used to write her letters detailing what was happening on her favorite soap opera Y&R. She was stationed in Germany for a bit and I remember being extremely upset when she left. She didn’t ask me if it was alright for her to go. Kid brain, kids tend to think the world revolves around them and to a certain extent, it does. I was in high school and had the hardest time adjusting to her not being there.
The things objects help us remember, if it’s not in a song, it’s in a treasure. She still has my letters and guards them like they’re national treasures, lol. Great post. Now I’m feeling like a little walk down memory lane.
A little something that has survived me, my kids, and my grandson… is a little geisha doll mu mom brought me from overseas. I received it when I was 12 and haven’t let a single person lay a finger on it. She’s still intact, though a lil worn from age and dust, she still looks good.
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What a great post, Jeff. I think we’ve all got boxes of memorabilia. I know I have. Yours sounds fascinating – there is such a variety of things in it with so many memories attached to them. From my experience, the only problem with keeping them all is that when we ‘pop our clogs’ (die), it all gets left for our children to sort out. I know when we were clearing out Mum’s stuff, there was just such a vast amount of things that must have meant something to Mum but absolutely nothing to us, nor any idea why they were special to her. They all had to be disposed of, and no one wanted to deal with them. I think they went with all the stuff that went to the house clearance people. There was nothing of any value, probably just sentimental to Mum like my stuff is to me. I should learn from that and get rid of my ‘stuff’, but it’s more complicated than you think when they hold memories and you have attachments to them. I’ve got things I’ve brought into my adult life from childhood. I really should let them go. My children won’t thank me if I don’t. The same goes for paperwork. There are reams of the stuff stuffed in all sorts of places. I’ve got the estate agent’s details of my first flat with my ex. That was in 1977!
You have spurred me on to have a clearout (she says optimistically and meaningfully!) Ah, but will I? With my family coming frequently and the constant call of my laptop, any attempts might be futile. Sorry, kids.
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Personally, I’d much rather have my memorabilia on my blog rather than in a box. Our kids should be pretty please with us when we go. Other than those memory boxes, Susan and I are really minimalist.
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You have a good idea there, Jeff. I might take a leaf out of your book. Perhaps I should write a post about all my ‘stuff’, although I’ll probably never get around to sorting my stuff out enough for me to remember what to include in a similar blog. Great idea, though. X
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