Endearing Artifacts

Vestiges of our family-raising days are still around to remind us how reluctant we are to accept the empty nest left by our three sons years ago. We still find the golf clubs in the closet, the Ninja Turtles and Castle Grayskull in another bedroom, the cd's and records that got out of date and not taken in any moves, and the drawers full of old trumpet music and old class notes and texts. And in the garage we still shift around old fishing tackle boxes and piecemeal casting rods, an old skateboard or volleyball knee protectors, an old baseball and first baseman's mitt, an abandoned foot-operated air pump or bicycle tire repair kit.

In another bedroom remains a boombox that still works despite a broken plastic dial cover, and stuffed away in the closets are old band hats and trophies, certificates and yearbooks, loads of old toys and models, computer peripherals and disks, old electronics galore: cd players, walkmans, tape players, storage crates, and desktop miniatures. We still have Transformers and Super Heroes! I found Buzzoff! Remember him from the old Super Heroes action figures? Bet he'd be worth something on E-bay. Only last year did we finally get rid of the bowling ball and bag we kept kicking around in the garage, and the last of the kids' old bicycles finally got picked up by the curb a couple of years ago.

So why do we have these vestiges, these artifacts of our child-rearing days? When a son or daughter moves out, to go to college or try living in a different neighborhood or city, or heads off to military service or whatever makes them leave the homestead, they usually can't take everything they've collected or amassed, all their personal paraphrenalia and clothes, furniture, gifts, purchases, and effects of a lifetime with them to their new digs. There isn't room. And they're not usually prone to toss out or otherwise dispose of the things they probably will never touch again, just in order to clear out their former rooms and closets. They like to leave things they don't want to clutter their new place at home in their room. (They still consider the room they occupied in their parents' house as their room, more or less forever.) If they get married and raise a family of their own, it's still their old room to them. And they feel justified in leaving their stuff there forever as well. The parents didn't need the space when they lived there, so they surely son't need it now.


But it's not just our children that perpetuate these vestiges of former times. We, the parents, are just as reluctant to change a single thing, most of us. We say we'll make a son's or daughter's room a sewing room now, or a perfect den or workroom, or some such claim; but it seldom happens. More likely we try to keep it just as it was, right down to dresser-top items just so and the same pictures and posters on the walls. We'll need it, we say, when they come back to visit, and at holidays, for a guest room. The worst of us try to build a shrine out of the child's room and never move the least item from the way we remember it when the child occupied it. Maybe it's our way of coping with the empty nest, or keeping our children close to us psychologically, by keeping their possessions close to us. We couldn't wait till they grew up and moved out. But then we couldn't really let go of them, either. In keeping these vestiges, we keep them close to our hearts and don't really mind it, despite our churlish occasional complaining about them, because we need to. They're still our children, no matter how old they get, and always will be.