I’ve never been much of an organized homemaker. Heaven knows, I’ve tried over the years. But the stress of making sure three children stayed alive and healthy was more of a priority for this anxiety-laden mom. Recently, though, in my quest to distract myself from overthinking lest I wallow in the self-pity of broken dreams, I’ve taken on organizing my entire house: the linen closet, summer/winter closet, kitchen pantry, toy closet, bathroom cabinets and drawers. You name it, I’ve been cleaning it out, throwing away and organizing.
As I cleaned out the junk drawer of my dresser, I found several interesting items: bags and bags of baby teeth the Tooth Fairy left as a memento of my children’s youth, dozens and dozens of extra buttons from god-only-knows-what jackets and shirts and pants, a cassette recording of the first time I sang publicly as an adult, and a note from a friend who helped me climb out of the proverbial pit I dug for myself ten years ago.
So many memories tucked away into one, small drawer and forgotten. At one time, they’d been significant enough for me to keep. Out of fear that I might forget they ever existed if I threw them away, I re-bagged all the items and placed them in a newly-designated place for important, but useless, keepsakes.
To be honest, the baby teeth are gross, and the Tooth Fairy forgot to place names on the bags, so I don’t know which ones belong to whom.
The buttons are completely useless because I rarely wear anything with a button anymore. T-shirts and running shorts make up most of my attire.
I can’t bring myself to listen to the recording of me singing. I know exactly which song it is and remember what it represented to me at the time. I can’t bear to shed another tear over the loss of singing, so I stashed the tape away without listening.
The note is simply a reminder of a different failure in what feels like a different lifetime. I glanced at it without reading closely, and tucked it back into its envelope.
As useless as all the items seem to be, I couldn’t part with them. I’m not the hoarding kind; rather, I keep reminders of what I really can only treasure in my heart. I keep thinking of Biblical Mary, mother of Jesus, and how the story goes that she pondered all the treasures she stored in her heart. I consider the surface-level importance of baby teeth and buttons and a recording and a note. But, really, their value is much deeper: childhood innocence, taking care of details, courage to dream, and genuine friendship. Treasures.
These are the moments in life that slip away as quickly and quietly as if they were stolen while we’re busy existing. Babies grow into teenagers seemingly overnight. Attention and care to detail gets swept under the rug while we’re swept into the whirlwind of busy schedules. The courage to dream fades as quickly as a sunset when failure is the only view we see. The ties that bind a friendship together eventually unravel when people are pulled in different directions. We end up with baby teeth and buttons and such as pitiful reminders of treasures we can now only ponder in our hearts.
Perhaps pondering those treasures is a way to remind ourselves to have hope. When we feel as though the sky is fading to black and the earth is quaking beneath our feet and death is surely imminent, we can remember that it wasn’t always this way. We can hold on to the splintered, ragged mementos that serve as our proofs of purchase, and we can hope that we’ll once again be able to collect such precious treasures.
