Fooled by a Dummy

How I was outsmarted by a dummy:

In the bestseller “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” https://www.housebeautiful.com/lifestyle/organizing-tips/a25908482/marie-kondo-book-life-changing-magic-of-tidying-up-tips/one of Marie Condo’s basic rules is to get rid of anything that does not spark joy. While my daughter took this to a whole new level whittling down her belongings to basically the clothes on her back, my son got rid of one broken Iron Man action figure and called it a day.

And so, because I’m a mom who has chosen to buck the trend of at least trying to raise independent and self-sufficient kids, I packed up my son’s room. It was fairly easy going until I got to him. The puppet had been a birthday gift to my son from my in-laws a few years back, and he was a hit. I hadn’t seen my son play with him for a while though, and for sure the puppet’s tux and top hat were long gone.

While I felt certain the stripped puppet no longer sparked joy, I also felt if discarded the puppet would find a way back and kill me in my sleep.

In an attempt at a compromise, I put him in the box of stuff to donate. “I wish you well as I send you out into the world to make another kid happy,” I said, and there is a chance I said this out loud so he could hear. I then backed slowly out of the room.

Well, what do you know. I was sure myself or my husband had set out all boxes for donation out on our driveway for pick-up back in Colorado. But, we are now in Alaska and curiously I opened this unmarked box and there he was at the top of the pile. 3,364 miles later. Ah, well played, sir.

And on the opposite end of the spectrum, my daughter.

When it comes to possessions my daughter makes Marie Condo author of “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” look like a packrat.

If we all have past lives, my guess is my daughter was a train hopping hobo during the Great Depression. One who could write something like, “An Expert’s Guide to Riding the Rails” if only a pen and paper didn’t take up so much space.

Prior to our move to Alaska, the rest of us spent weeks sorting and filling bins and boxes. It took my daughter fifteen minutes to pack everything she wanted, and it all went in one backpack. One that met airline carry-on size restrictions.

As anyone with a teen daughter can totally not relate to my daughter likes to shop but not buy. I will press a credit card into her palm, drop her off at the mall, and beg her to buy back-to-school clothes only to return hours later for pick and see her with zero bags in hand. She’d hop in the car and hand the credit card back to me explaining everything was either too expensive or nothing she wanted. Sometimes I think my daughter is an alien posing as an American teenaged girl, one that could have used a few more hours of cultural instruction before the big pod drop.

Now you might be wondering about stuff that isn’t clothing? A couple of years earlier my daughter spent a day ridding her room of anything extraneous which appeared to be almost everything. Old photos and greeting cards, her stuffed animals and old dolls, a porcelain piggy bank from Tiffany’s (a baby gift from a good friend) and all her books including yearbooks.

I was startled when I saw the yearbooks in the recycling bin.

“Why would you get rid of your yearbooks?” I asked

“I never look at them,” she answered.

“Don’t you think one day you’ll want to look at them, just to remember middle school?”

“No,” she answered, looking at me like I just asked the stupidest question ever. And maybe it was.

While my husband admired and cheered on her ruthlessness I could help but feel a little sad. The cold and swift removal of so many icons from her childhood was something that was hard for me as her mother to not take a little personally. So in the aftermath I admit, I went to our curbside trash bin in order to rescue a few things. The piggy bank, photos that were still pinned to a pink sequined framed bulletin board, and one lime green, big eyed-stuffed dinosaur. It was a stuffed animal that still “brought joy” to me at least, because it had been the very first toy I bought for my baby on the day I had an ultrasound and learned I would be having a human girl.

End note:

Perhaps I should be thankful for the stowaway. Two weeks into our move to Soldatna, AK and my son’s puppet is still his only friend.