I am not a keeper or a saver of things.
Partly this is out of necessity. As a chronic loser of things, I had to learn how to part with items before I was ready to. My favorite teddy bear got lost in the duffel bag my mother shipped to college, most likely because she attached the address label to the duffel bag with a sole piece of scotch tape. (I had lost that same teddy in Heathrow airport when I was 9, but he was returned to me by a flight attendant.) I have lost heirloom jewelery while moving houses, and entire boxes of photo albums in the mail.
But I am also not a keeper of things because I am not a big believer in things. Please do not think, for one moment, that this means I am not a materialist. It’s just that while I believe in the power of procurement, I also believe that things should not be kept for too long. (I like to get rid of things before I accidentally lose them.)
This is probably why I do not have many keepsakes.
But, even though I do not have baby books or pewter baby shoe bookends, I didn’t throw out this:

This is one of boxes of Efram’s action figure collection — which took several years to curate and which once kept him busy for hours on end. I loved looking finding, lying on his stomach, him deep in play with some giant insect man and his army of protectors.
The action figures have been ignored for a while now, and they almost didn’t make the move to New York, but I couldn’t quite part with them; I had a rare moment of object attachment.
Or was it premonition?
Last month Efram got a concussion, as he tends to do at least twice a year. No TV. No reading. No devices of any sort for at least a day.
So, out came the action figures. And those little guys, even the plastic GI Joes, which I really don’t understand, kept EVERYONE busy for days. And they are still working their magic. Especially on me. I got to dial everyone back a bit, slow things down, even temporarily.
If only they could work their magic on NYC trash removal.