50. The Secret Life of Things – Sloane Crosley

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So often we get used to seeing the same objects in our homes and we forget how they came to be there.

So often we get used to seeing the same objects in our homes and we forget how they came to be there. We take them for granted. Our worlds are a bit smaller at the moment and so it can be helpful to examine them anew.

– Sloane Crosley

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Prompt:

Imagine you’re not home (already a leap) and a friend you don’t know well is staying in your house. This friend looks around at all your framed photos and trinkets and coffee table books but they stop at one object and can’t figure out why it’s on display. Maybe it’s a strange drawing or a plastic piece of fruit or a coaster with Elvis’s face on it. Write a little narrative essay explaining the backstory of this item and why it has meaning for you.


Kelly Matula

Location: Ann Arbor, MI
About: I am a healthcare researcher and writer living with multiple disabilities and chronic illnesses. This journal entry gives the history behind my favorite pieces of desk decor.
Age: 33

The Dog and the Ducks

I don’t remember the first time I saw a husky in person, but I have a really clear memory of a picture of one. There was a drawing of an Eskimo and a husky in my third (or was it second?) grade spelling book. I loved that drawing. I tried copying it or tracing it but it never came out to my satisfaction. From then on, I became fascinated by huskies and dogsledding, helped by the release of the animated film about Balto around the same time.

We had a neighbor who had a husky, but both dude and dog (Gene and Bandit) were if not mean at least intimidating to a kid, so I stayed away. When our live-in nanny of around that time, a lovely recent college grad named Sue, made me my personalized decorative birthday pillow —my brothers and I each got one, with a quilt-like design with fabric pieces spelling out our name and how old we were, with a fabric-piece figure of us surrounded by things we liked —she included a version of the husky from my spelling book (this pillow is now in a keepsake box in my parents’ basement). I really wanted to own a husky, but unfortunately it turns out they’re very high maintenance, and especially with the challenges caused by my physical disabilities, I’ll probably realistically never be able to own one, unless I marry somebody who’s willing to super-commit to exercising and grooming it (it’s on my Dream Guy Wish List, but it’s very far from a requirement, just a super-awesome bonus if it just so happens to happen). I looked I into the possibility of getting one as a service dog, but from what I’ve read and the few husky owners I’ve met, they’re really hard to train to do anything besides pull stuff. Maybe if I needed a wheelchair pulled, but what I’d need is assistance with balance (not the best job for a massive dog that likes to pull), assistance with picking up dropped objects, etc. Tasks that are very much not a husky’s thing, it seems. Oh well. Just another unrealistic childhood dream, maybe. 

Once that pillow went into storage —it doesn’t take too long after 9 before a pillow with a big 9 on it is not a decor piece you want prominently displayed, however much you love the person who made it —it’s not like I had a bunch of husky decor or stuffed animals. There was the one husky Beanie Baby, Nanook, but it’s not like I acquired a whole sled team. Nanook was one of several Beanie Babies I never did get rid of, though, and I’d put him out once in a while but not super regularly and never anywhere super prominent. I’ve always thought of huskies as sort of an aspirational spirit animal, since they’re so hardworking. I’ve worked hard in my life, but especially the last five to ten years I’ve struggled with feeling resentful and burned out (see Day 44 on being tired of fighting). So I feel more removed from their embodiment of perseverance, though it sometimes still feels motivating. I also really hate being cold, which makes the idea of me being a “husky person” a surprise to most people, probably. 

The animal that most friends probably associate with me these days is ducks. I wasn’t a big duck fanatic as a kid (that was my childhood best friend’s little sister, who had duck everything). But when I first started grad school at Carnegie Mellon, I was in the campus bookstore one day (getting notebooks or something. Maybe textbooks, but they were in a separate wing) and, in a display of stuffed animals wearing little school shirts, I found this duck that was just the cutest thing ever so I had to buy it (I then bought one for a friend’s kid who was born around that time, I thought it was so great). I took him to my office and he became our informal cohort mascot. One of my office- and cohort-mates named him Producktivity, and we’d pass him around when one of us needed to be particularly productive, we’d take him to study sessions, and I’d take him home if I had particularly tough work to do at home too. I even snuck him in my backpack to my dissertation proposal and defense (I left the zipper open a little so he could “watch”). At some point I remembered I still had Quackers the Beanie Baby duck, so Producktivity got a duck friend at my office. And then another friend gave me a Sherlock Holmes rubber duck (a favorite literary character), so I have a little trio. It’s just enough to make a row, so when life gets crazy I can look at them and think, at least I still have all my ducks in a row!

When I started my current job, the ducks came to my office and sat in their row on my desk (anyone who asks gets the figure of speech explanation). I packed them up to bring home when work-from-home started, but my desk at home is smaller enough that in order to be in a row they have to be sort of hidden behind the monitor. I hadn’t had the husky out in a while, but one day during the first few weeks of quarantine I was on FaceTime with office mate and her two year old, who was excitedly showing me a bunch of stuffed animals. I went to get my childhood teddy bear (it, a Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey doll, and the handful of Beanie Babies are in a box in my closet) to show her, and saw Nanook for the first time since moving. I thought recapturing some of the old excitement and inspiration to persevere that huskies used to inspire in me might be helpful, so I brought him out. I even set a picture of a sled dog team as my phone background. And when I do go back to the office, I think Nanook will come along with the ducks. He won’t have to sit in the row, though.


Sharmila Rao

Location: Navi Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
About: An aspiring writer seeking the companionship of words.
Age: 53

RECIOUS BRIC A BRAC

Squirrel or hamster? Magpie or crow? Am I a reincarnation of these creatures I like? Although I am no believer in these concepts, I sometimes wonder. 

We do have something in common: they collect food wealth; I do the wealth of memories.

As a little girl I had begged my mother to give me a shelf of my own in one of the few cupboards we had.  Space was a severe constraint but my  mother  kind to her youngest child's dreams did give me one.   This shelf was my world, actually fairy-world:  I collected pretty cards I had painstakingly painted, shiny coloured paper, sequins, quaint shaped shells, scented rubbers, paints , dolls, storybooks , and nearly everything i fancied.  Each of these had a place in my heart too. 

As I grew up I  went along picking seashells on the sands of life. 

I have something to remind me of every phase: a tiny doll I had stolen when I was five, the drawings that  won me prizes in school, a memento gifted by college friends when I turned 21, the last letter my best friend wrote before cancer claimed her early in life ( I still use the pink comb she gifted me), a beautiful essay I read, the first card my husband gave me, the sonogram in my first trimester, the name-tag  around my son's tiny wrist when he was  born, a piece of soap he engraved with his two front teeth, the  dress I wore when I was ten, for my aunt's wedding, my son's first sweater… it goes on.

A few weeks ago, my nephew called from London . He needed a picture of himself when he was a baby. It was for some trivia contest in his college. The next day I sent him five pictures. Thrilled, he said to me, " I always knew whom to ask."

When they have a child I plan to give his newborn the silver bangle and baby dress his Dad wore.

I became the Custodian of the family archives in part by choice and part compulsion.

We  shifted to our present home after selling the ancestral property of my husband, and that of my family, when my parents and brother died. Everything was dumped into one space and took me years to sort out. 

It was of course physically daunting but even more so, emotionally draining. 

Each time I lay my hands on something  they had personally used and liked, I found myself helplessly drifting  down memory lane with tears in my eyes.

How painful to decide what could be kept or thrown ; what to preserve and restore. It took me days to quietly dispose off my brother's secret collection of Playboy magazines without embarrassing his soul.

Dad's pipe, his walking stick, my grandpa's pen and passport dated 1925, my brother's wallet, the grocery list my mum wrote ( I fondly see her handwriting), my mother-in-law's mouth organ, the last crossword in my Dad's hand when he died, his cigarette holder, and more.

All these can be found with me at any time. Our loved ones live in our memory and in our hearts. They also live in the things they leave behind. It is the  closest you can get to honour them long after they are gone.  I find comfort and peace in this.

There is a mirror in my living room. It resembles something of yore. On it stands a small sandalwood idol of Lord Ganesha - one of the best known and most worshipped deity in the Hindu pantheon. 

It is the first gift my husband gave me when we were dating. The  deep, woody  fragrance of sandalwood reminds me of his warmth and love. It still lingers even after three decades.

Move over squirrel. Move over crow.

I am a proud antiquarian!!