Little Bag of Toys

Day 332: Little Bag of Toys

I remember being eight years old and imagining, really imagining, what it would be like to be 18 years old. I was standing in the laundry in our house on Frederick Drive. The door to the garage was open, and the garage light was off. I remember telling myself, "Someday, I will be 18 years old." I wasn't 100% sure I'd get there. The Cold War was on, and I thought the odds were pretty good that I'd get vaporized first.

Our lives, and what we do, and who we know, and what we own, are fleeting. These little toys have already bloomed and withered like spring ephemerals, while the kids grew up and grew interested in other things. This is a truth I prefer not to ponder.

Lately, many of my cohort have aging parents, ill or dying or already passed on. So I've been thinking and talking a lot lately about the detritus of a life, a full house of stuff that needs to be sorted and distributed, sold or thrown away or given away, and how for most people, stuff has a lot of symbolism and sentiment attached to it.

Sometimes siblings fight over what's left. As though the stuff will stand in somehow for the parent who's gone. Or perhaps the children never got enough - love or stuff or structure or recognition - and this is their last chance for sufficiency. Or perhaps the children are still competing with each other to the very end, still trying to even things out, still trying to be on top. But then, sometimes the siblings get through it just fine, dividing the goods with kindness or declining to take anything. Sometimes the deceased can't let go, leaving detailed instructions about who gets what.

Sometimes there are no instructions at all, and sorting it out takes years. There was a house across the street at Gros Cap, up in the U.P., that we watched fall into ruin while the siblings fought about who got what. Eventually the house disappeared altogether, like a reflection in a rippled pond.

We've got bits of stuff around our house, souvenirs of ancestors we don't know, or ancestors we did know. A chipped FiestaWare bowl and an old Shaker desk, a bone china cocoa set and a heavy crystal vase. Lonely single survivors of somebody's long and forgotten life.

Now I sometimes imagine what it will be like to be 80 years old.

I'm pretty sure that I'll take a neat, clean house for granted. I probably won't have a basket full of homemade ugly sock dolls or little plastic toys. I'll have more aches and pains. If I keep doing yoga, I may be able to keep up a pretty good walking pace. I'll most likely be an orphan by then, and I bet I dream vivid dreams about my parents. Some of my good friends will be dead. I'll watch more t.v. than I do now; I won't be working. I might not see very well, so I'll listen to books on tape. I might be a grandmother. I might have a small, walkable dog, or I might have a cat, or I might live in an assisted living facility that doesn't allow pets. I might be lonely.

Eighty is only 30 years away. I remember 30 years ago very well. Thirty years seems like nothing.

I'm not 100% sure I'll get there.