Meaningful Clutter: The Self on the Shelf
The existence of these objects is a testament to my own.
I have this shelf…
It looks like a maniac’s diorama just underneath the food-stained cookbooks. Any children who visit my house discover it right away. The gold Buddha hiding behind the Indian auto rickshaw is invariably the first thing they’ll grab.
Most of these ostensibly worthless objects carry a story from my life. It is not always one I thought would be memorable when I lived it.
For example, Mr. Sandman came from a box of Cheerios that I opened at my parents’ house in 2007. It was part of a promotion for the movie Spiderman 3. My mom surreptitiously put the figure into my suitcase after discovering it on the kitchen table, and I later found it among my socks when I returned to my own home across the Country. I didn’t intend to keep it for 16 years, but it somehow wound up on the shelf, and now it’s a memory.
I used to be scared to throw things away.
In my young mind, certain objects would take on a meaning larger than they could hold. When I was a teenager, I lost my original, heart-shaped earring studs — shot into my ear at five years old — in a rope-swing incident. I felt true grief at the loss of what seemed like a huge part of myself. Funnily enough, it was that particular loss that actually helped me overcome these fears. When the sudden, catastrophic loss of my self never happened after those studs disappeared, I gained a confidence in my ability to survive without my talismans.
As an academic nomad in my twenties and early thirties, throwing or giving away non-essential items became my ethos. There was a constant culling of items, from old cell-phone chargers to reclining chairs stuck in the reclining position. But there were always a few things with which I could not bear to part. And thus began the shelf.
A few of my favorites:
That little sheep peering out from behind the Indian auto rickshaw, just in front of the conch reminds me of my best friends’ wedding to each other which I officiated in 2012. It was attached to my name tag at their dinner. All of their approximately 100 guests got one, but I bet I am one of the few that still has it.
The robot was part of a birthday gift I got from my best friend in about 2004. It is a wind-up toy, and has a key in its back that you turn to make it march around. What kind of robot marches? I have always found it completely delightful.
The artwork in the back was painted by my mother in the year after her retirement from corporate America at the age of 63. As a retirement gift, I bought her painting classes at a local college. This was her first work of many to follow. She is now prolific and proficient and paints beautiful landscapes (and pet portraits) for friends and family. The walls of my house are filled her with gorgeous paintings, which she has framed and shipped to me.
Okay, so it’s not just one shelf.
I have a few keepsakes stashed in other parts of my house.
That toilet paper cover is a 1920’s doll that my grandmother’s sister made her when she was herself a teenager. My grandmother was born in 1924 and died in 2017. She always kept it on the back of her toilet seat at her house in Belmont, WI. After her funeral, I got permission from my entire, perplexed family, to take it home with me. Yes, she’s seen better days. Her head falls off with the slightest nudge, and her right arm is precariously resting in place in a mangled, plastic socket. Let’s not talk about her hair loss problem.
That plastic cross-stitch sign in my closet came from my other grandmother’s bathroom. I inherited it in 2018, after she passed away in her own home at the age of 92. As a too-self-aware child perfectionist, this sign always made me feel calm when I washed my hands in her bathroom sink. It showed up in box of some of her other things I had asked for (including a coffee table presently in my living room) when my parents were inventorying and cleaning out her house after her death. My dad instinctively included the sign in the box, and as soon as I saw it, I knew it was exactly what I needed to remind me of my grandmother.
These objects tell my story perhaps better than my photographs.
Many of my memories are associated with two-dimensional representations of captured scenes. And I’ve heard that seeing a photograph of an event can impair your actual memory of it. The memories associated with these seemingly arbitrary baubles live in all four dimensions. They shift and grow in my evolving relationship with my past. They keep the record of my existence. They entertain the rare toddler who visits my house.
And I honestly won’t mind if you toss them all when I die.