Whatever Happened to My Lunchbox?

Whatever happened to my lunchbox?

When came the day 

That it got thrown away?

And don't you think I should have had some say

In that decision?

--John Mayer 

One of the things I did while on vacation was sort through (some of) a giant stack of boxes of my childhood that my loving parents delivered recently.

There was all kinds of crazy crap in there: my cast from when I broke my arm in 5th grade, my first earring (one of two), music, books, and a boatload of china dolls.

Preston and I were talking and it seems like every kid has something that they collect.  Both of us hoped our collections would be worth something some day... he collected comic books, and I collected china dolls.  I had a ton, and some of them were really beautiful.  I never played with them, because they were a collection - they lived up on a high shelf that ran the length of my room, to be looked at but rarely touched.  (My rules/choice, not my parents'.)

Anyways, when I left for college, a large part of my old room was still intact, including the dolls.  When my parents sold that house, they packed it all up and moved it to the barn at the farm.  And now it is migrating back into my life.

It's a funny thing that happens to you when you go through stuff like that.  There is always a pervading, "Gosh, we saved a lot of JUNK!"  Which is always followed (in my head) with a, "I wonder how much money I could have now if I hadn't wasted all of it!"  But then you react emotionally to things, too.  Saving that cast.  Saving a bundle of letters that my parents/grandparents/friends sent to me at band camp one year - it's like a snapshot in time!  Cried over my Granny's letters and saved ALL of them.  But the most surprising thing to me was my indignation at how my parents stored those dolls.  It looked like they had just tossed them into boxes, then they didn't even tape the boxes up to keep out stuff, then when they stored them in the barn they got spiders, RATS, etc all up in them.

I am grateful that my parents love me enough to have saved so many artifacts from my childhood.  Sometimes I wish they hadn't when I am struggling with an emotional attachment that is preventing me from throwing away an item that I had completely forgotten the existence of until I opened a dirty box.  Or when my hamstrings are still sore A WEEK LATER from bending over to open/try to vacuum all the crud off the dolls...  Or when they boxed them up with such a lack of care that I have to see my once-prized possessions in the middle of a rat's next made from their stuffing - that's just not how I want to remember them.

Righteous indignation: wandering around grumbling that I'll never do that to the Z.  (Ha, we'll see.)