As we surely know by now by the incessant playing on the radio of “Santa Claus is coming to town” and by the 101 daily “today only sale” emails from Macy’s Christmas is coming on fast and furiously and tons of new items are being bought. Amazon thinks it may be a few years away from having drones drop off our purchased items. I can only imagine what Christmas will look like in a decade.  Probably Christmas will seem like a war of the robots overtaking our skies.   As I too go a tad bit over board in my gift buying for my son, I wonder where will everything go?  I have a New York house.  If you are not familiar with the real estate market in New York, it is quite unreal.  Anything over a 1000 square feet is considered a luxury. My problem, however, is that I am loathe to throw many things out. Such loathing is not very adaptive for a New Yorker.

I look about my son’s room filled with toys and wonder about what it is that I can throw out. Surely, there are some toys that are missing parts and surely I can throw those out. Wait, not so fast. I surely cannot throw those all out. He doesn’t necessarily want to part with his broken toys or items meant more for a 3 year old. That, however, is not the problem. The problem is me. I have an attachment issue. I find sentimentality hinders my ability to throw things out. I do know the root of my sentimentality problem, though.

Recently, I brought home two trophies from my Caribbean cruise that I had won for my awesome 80’s trivia knowledge. They are cheap, plastic trophies that seem a bit silly to all that gaze at it –especially, at work. Yes, I took it into work. I do not have my PhD diploma hanging in my office like many others tend to do. However, I have my cheap Carnival Cruise line trophy for all to see.   Although they are cheap and come from a moment of extreme vacation silliness, those trophies mean the world to me.

When I was a young girl in the South Bronx, I participated in contests, spelling bees and pageants.  I won my fair share of them. Further, I was labeled as “gifted” which meant that I had accumulated medals galore. I had trophies. I had certificates.  They meant a lot to my family. They meant a lot to me.  They meant a lot to my teachers who had spent great amount of time mentoring me. When I moved away to boarding school, I didn’t take my trophies with me. I had no idea what was I supposed to take with me. It was a whole new world. Then I lived abroad.  I learned to live out of a suitcase. When I went to college and lived in the dorm, I kept my belongings to a bare minimum. I was always living out of a suitcase.  The items I had left in the Bronx, due to unforeseen circumstances, eventually were gone. I know longer had my book collection, including my then-favorite books of Little Women and Tales of Two Cities. I no longer had my typewriter. I no longer had my trophies and medals. It was all gone. And I didn’t realize how much I missed them until I very recently won those silly trophies on a cruise.

Although my trophies have long gone missing, I started collecting things-possessions-when I got my first apartment in DC over a decade ago. Then I moved cross-country to California. There I went again trying to figure out what to leave behind. But at that time, I started keeping things. I started keeping postcards. I started taking photos and printing them. I went from one photo album to ten. Now, there are no more photo albums. It’s all virtual now. But I miss printing the photos and going through them one by one. I miss remembering that moment in time that caused me to want to capture it for eternity. Now, I have 1,000 photos of the same moment as the camera (even the SLR ones) can take rapid fire photos.

Let me get back to those trophies. I wish I had them. I clearly know what I accomplished as a kid. I clearly know what I have gone on to accomplish as an adult. Yet, I can’t help but wonder where did my trophies go? Are they in some pawn shop or in the Staten Island Landfill long since rusted?  There are websites out there that post articles about de-cluttering one’s life and getting rid of so-called sentimental items such as trophies.  I get that we don’t necessarily want to be a pack rat society.  Also, our generation tends to move more and more often; from job to new job.  The home roots don’t get as settled as they once did. But do we need to get rid of trophies in order to lead a more nomadic, de-cluttered life?

In the Movie Citizen Kane-the perennially number one voted film of all time- the main character (Mr. Kane himself) is a powerful but unhappy man. In a key scene in the film he receives a trophy from his 467 employees as a welcome home gift. He had grown the newspaper company from being near bankrupt with a few employees to having nearly 500 employees.   Yet the trophy-that silver plated trophy-was meaningless. The one true trophy that Kane wanted was (spoiler alert) Rosebud-his childhood sled.  At the end of the film, his butler and a reporter are trying to figure out the meaning of Rosebud (the one true thing of value to Kane) while standing over the discarded trophy. The juxtaposition couldn’t be clearer:  a  trophy for trophy’s sake is no real trophy.  If a piece of lint brings you great memories and joy, no need to trash it. So my cruise line cheesy trophy will stay put for it symbolizes all my past triumphs and losses and how I keep moving forward. It’s a lot of meaning to imbue such a plastic “toy” with but I think it can live it up to it.

Back to my shopping and de-cluttering conundrum. What has special meaning to a five year old and what will continue to mean something to him forty years from now?  I do not know the answer to that as I look around the household mess. It all looks like silly toys that he will soon forget about. But any one of them could end up being a Rosebud. Whatever it is, I do know  that I look forward to going on that journey of meaningful discovery with him.