I am something of a packrat. I derive comfort and pleasure from the artifacts of my past. My parents’ house is still full of material remnants of my youth, from art projects to my physical music collection to once-beloved items of clothing.
Sometimes, this works out: last year, when my son got into thrifting culture, I pulled out all my concert T-shirts, most in fine condition, and three of them entered his regular rotation. Other times, not so much—the other day I dug out a folio and found a dozen tour books from those same concerts, all in great condition, all completely useless. Win some, lose some.
Now that I have kids and an apartment with insufficient storage, I’m much more judicious with my keepsakes, suburban archive aside. For example, I recently gave an outgrown kid’s bike to my cousin for his young son. We’ve given them stuff before; my first-cousin-once-removed is 10 years old and adorable. But this one hit different.
Two years ago, the kid got really into Lego. My own boys had accumulated an unfeasibly large Lego collection, and I took a fair amount of pleasure in bequeathing them to the next generation: there must be five thousand pieces! And all the instruction books! Please love them as we loved them!
I should note that I had my own Lego collection as a child, all hand-me-down, and I always planned on handing them down, too. But I never had anyone to give them to. My nieces and nephews weren’t really into Legos, and by the time my own kids were Lego-ing, my box of instructionless space theme pieces—many still assembled—wasn’t interesting. They’re still in my parents’ basement. But at least I could give away the recent ones. Please love them as we loved them.
Roughly eight months after an enthusiastic handover, my cousin suffered a major fire in his home. All those Legos are gone.
I haven’t worked out what metaphor exists in there, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot.