THE FRAGILITY OF LIFE

I got this little ceramic puppy for my birthday. I’m guessing it was my 5th or 6th. My friend Denise gave it to me. Even though I was really young, I remember she didn’t wrap it in wrapping paper like you are supposed to do for a birthday gift. There was a Kleenex around the bed and the dog sat on top of it. She simply handed it to me this way.

What a treasure!  As a little girl that age, I didn’t usually get my hands on something so fragile. I was in heaven to have such a cute, tiny puppy made with a material that was designed for a more mature kid.  I did drop the bed and break it, though, just like they said I would. Dad glued the pieces back together. You can see the cracks on the bottom if you look closely. The bed has never been the same since then.

When we were in college, Denise’s parents were both killed in a car accident. We had moved to another town so I wasn’t in touch with her any more at that point.  In fact, to this day, I haven’t found her—even with the help of the internet. But I think of Denise and her sister, Dawn, from time to time and I wonder how they are doing. I can’t imagine the magnitude of their loss, especially since they were so young when their mom and dad perished.

After I heard the news of the accident, my little puppy and his broken bed began to symbolize the fragility of life for me. It makes me sad to look at it and think about Denise and her family's brokenness. Yet somehow, the puppy’s sleeping tranquility in the midst of it all gives me a sense of hope. It reminds me of the story of Jesus sleeping in the boat during the great storm.

We do not know what today will bring and we are so very, very vulnerable. Yet, I try to rest like my puppy, with faith in my savior and a peace that passes all understanding.

HOW RIDICULOUS I WAS AND STILL AM

This morning, I took a bite of a Thin Mint Girl Scout cookie in order to help take me back to my scouting days. Okay, I took more than a bite. I ate a few. Exactly how many, I’m not saying, but I had to. How else could I write about the Girl Scout stuff I found?

Mmmm...me with a box of Girl Scout cookies today

The front of my Girl Scout folder

Girl Scouts. It seems so long ago now that I practically forget that chapter in my life. But how could I? I was in it for seven years, earned countless badges and my sister and I were the cookie-selling champs of our troupe.  Not only that, I learned valuable things like how to build a campfire, whittle sticks with a jackknife, tie knots, use a bandana in eleven different and mostly useless ways and, of course, make a buddy burner for use in a vagabond stove upon which you can bake a muffin in the wilderness in just twenty minutes. How could I possibly have survived without this essential leadership training?

My Brownie and Junior Girl Scout handbook

My membership card

My seventh grade school picture, the last year I was in Girl Scouts

“On my honor, I will try: To serve God, my country and mankind, and to live by the Girl Scout Law.” At each and every meeting and camp out, we recited that promise with the first three fingers of our right hands aloft. The secret Girl Scout handshake, by the way, is done with the left hand while the right hand is in this awkward, three finger position. But don’t tell anyone I gave you this insider information. 

What did saying that promise over and over again do for me—other than reinforce patriarchy? Fortunately, today’s Girl Scouts say “help people at all times” instead of “serve mankind.” Now that I think about it, the premise is quite admirable. It’s about being respectful, honest and ready to serve the community. And I can’t ever leave a place without following the Girl Scout motto: Leave a place cleaner than you found it.

A drawing from the handbook. I notice how multi-racial they were, especially for way back then.

My well-worn badge book

I suppose what I remember most about Girl Scouts is how zealous I was to earn badges. I became a total badge-earning junkie. In fact, I wish I could find my over-badged sash. It would be fun to see again. It’s probably in the basement and if I keep up the archeological dig, I'll find it. But what was the drive behind earning those badges? What’s so great about achievement anyway? I am still hooked on it and perhaps my Girl Scouting days set the stage for it.

What I find interesting as I sift through my badge book is that I didn’t even do them well. I slapped the projects together and did as little as I could get away with. It wasn’t about quality for me, it was about quantity. Get more badges—that’s all that matters! I’m trying to deprogram myself from that mentality. It’s good to look back at this stuff and laugh at myself, though. At least I realize how ridiculous I was and still am. 

Here's a sample page from the badge book showing the requirements to earn a particular badge. Yep. I earned the Storyteller Badge.

My family timeline, created for a badge project. Click to see it larger. Note that the final, exciting event documented here is that I got a gerbil!

A notecard with the lyrics to a song I wrote called "Animals." There were several of these cards in my folder, so I must have made a set to teach the song to my troupe. This one is in my mom's handwriting. Obviously, I solicited help from her as I always did. I'm sure it was her idea to put them on 3x5 cards.

From a badge project report about dolls. This is a list of my own dolls, their names and a little about each one.

The rest of the doll list

A multimedia collage of knots I'd learned at a Girl Scout campout

In any case, the Thin Mints taste great and now that I've reviewed it in the Girl Scout handbook, I might just cook myself a muffin on a vagabond stove while singing the Brownie Smile Song.

LITTLE HOUSE, BIG DREAMS

I don’t know why, but I have always adored small things. The littler the better. I guess I’m just a sucker for the cute.

One of the items I unearthed in my basement is this little doll house. It stands less than five inches tall. My dad made it for me and as you might be able to tell, I did the interior decoration. I get a kick out of the actual materials I used. Real shingles for the roof, real carpeting on the floor, real fabric for the tiny beds and window treatments. And, of course, it is evident my propensity for bright colors started early on.

At the Green County fair, I bought some tiny blown glass animals made by a local artist. I don’t know what happened to them but they used to be the pets in this house. They were such a happy menagerie. 

For hours, I’d play with this little house, big dreams dancing in my head. What would I be? Where would I go? I acted out the myriad of possibilities with my miniature dolls and doggies. Though it’s not at all as I imagined my life would be, I think my little girl self would be happily surprised at who I’ve become.

THE BUNNY WITH THE FUNNY NOSE

“Why did I give the bunny a Muppet nose?” I said with a giggle as I picked up this fine sculptural piece from my collection of early works.

I created it for an art class assignment at Northside Elementary School in Monroe, Wisconsin where my dad was the superintendent of schools. Art was always my best subject. I could outshine most of my peers in this class. They didn’t use the A-B-C grading system for lower elementary. I remember they had SP for “Strong Progress,” which was the equivalent of a B—and E for “Excellent,” the A of the little kid world. I loved Es and I got them in art every time.

However, as I studied the work before me, I wondered why any art teacher would give it an E. How young was I, anyway? I opened the rabbit’s dramatically exaggerated tail and pulled out some of the newspaper stuffing to try to find a date. Thursday, December 6, 1979. I must have been in fourth grade. I've been an art teacher. I know that fourth graders can do better than this.

So what does the bunny with the funny nose, created by my nine year-old self, have to tell me about my story? Hmm, this writing project is going to be more difficult than I thought. 

Well, for one I made excellent use of the media. It’s hard to get intense color out of Crayola on brown paper bag but I did it. Just look at those vibrant yellows! And the white on top of the darker paper almost has an Elvis-on-black-velvet effect. I am sure I got cramps coloring that hard.

Another thing I notice is the originality of the work. I mean, this guy not only has a pink button nose, and hauntingly huge eyes, he’s also smiling. The Holstein pattern of the dots is creative, too. This re-envisioned rodent is a one-of-a-kind find, that’s for sure.

Yet, I notice something else. I had punched holes all around half of it and begun to lace it up with thick yarn. Very nice. But then, it appears I got lazy and just stapled the rest of it closed. I’m willing to bet I procrastinated working on this and then had to grab ass at the last minute. Maybe I only got an E- on it. 

So why have I always been a procrastinator? Was it that being a superintendent’s kid made me feel the need to aim higher than my classmates and this touch of perfectionism caused it? Or was I just more into fun-having and made that the priority instead of my academic work? Since I loved art so much, though, why wouldn’t finishing the happy rabbit be fun enough? And that reminds me: where did my strong creative identity come from, anyway? Nobody else in my family was an artist. It always made me feel different.

In the end, this awkward art seems to raise more questions than it answers. One thing’s for sure, though: I’m a better artist now.

A REMNANT OF MY FORMER CERTAINTY

My mom saved just about everything I ever did—finger paintings, handwriting practice sheets, coloring pages, construction paper collages, even math worksheets. She carefully collected all my school papers and projects in a box each year. Then, during the summer, she’d seal up the box, label it and have Dad find a place for it somewhere in the basement of the house. When that was full, the attic at the cabin offered the additional space needed to house these treasures.

You are supposed to save your stuff. It’s important. It tells your unique story. And well, you never know, you might just want to look at it again someday. Right?

This was fine for a long time. Stowed away in my parents’ properties, these artifacts of my childhood didn’t bother me. Then, when I moved back to Iowa eleven years ago, Mom and Dad started showing up with these boxes. One by one they trickled in. My husband, William, and I tried to stop the onslaught but Mom left me no choice. She explained that she’d gone to the work to save them so I was obligated to deal with them. “You can throw these things away,” she conceded, “but you have to promise me you’ll look at every thing before you do.”

Before I even began to fulfill my promise to her, Mom died. Soon after, Dad cleaned out the house and sold it. In the process, he dumped lots more boxes in my basement.

Then one day, I was in the basement looking for something and I saw a box that had fallen out of the stack at the foot of the stairs. It was a cute little gray thing. What caught my eye is that it had my name written on it. Curious, I picked it up. One end had a label that read: Gay Nineties Candies.  I opened it up and was shocked to find the corner of my baby blanket, carefully packed with shredded newspaper. 

“Blanky!” I exclaimed, grabbed the piece of blanket and instinctively held it to my nose, just as I had done as a baby. 

What the hell was Blanky doing in my basement? It all started to come back to me. I’d loved that pale pink blanket until it was so raggedy Mom deemed it a trip hazard when I carried it and a choking danger when I slept with it. I didn’t care, though. I adored it. Somehow, she was diplomatic enough to convince me to let her trim off the worst parts. I have no idea how she managed this. Over time, she cut more and more off—not unlike the manner in which the Gingerbread Man got himself eaten by the fox. Eventually, there was nothing but a small, stained corner of the nylony edging. Then, Mom boxed Blanky up for me and hid it away. 

That blanket had given me years of unmitigated strength. I used to tuck it into my diapers and run around wearing it as a superhero cape. I’m not sure why I didn’t tie it around my neck like a normal superhero. I don’t know, but it still worked this way as you can see by the picture below. 

Yes, that's me—a little thumb-sucking, diaper-caped toddler sitting in the doll house my father made for my sister and me (an exact replica of the house in which we lived).

Like the security blankets of countless children around the world, Blanky was a friend and a physical symbol that I was safe—that the world couldn’t conquer me.

Now, in the dim basement, I held the remnant of my former certainty. It actually didn’t smell as bad as it looked. I remember it had smelled so good, particularly with my thumb tucked into my mouth under my blanketed nose. I sniffed it again. It it smelled like stale seventies. All the power had gone out of it.

Should I have had more of an emotional response to this rare find? I mean, it had waited decades for me and now I was dismissing it in a matter of minutes.

I summoned enthusiasm and ran upstairs with the box. “Look!” I told William, “I found the last bit of my baby blanket!” He glanced up from his computer with zero reaction. 

“Isn’t that interesting that my mom saved it for me?”

“Yes,” he said flatly.

I shrugged, placed it back in the time capsule box from which it had come and took it downstairs.

In the following weeks, I continued to think about that event and about all the stuff of my story. Why is it that we in the Western world place so much emphasis upon our physical possessions? Yes, our things can bring us joy, and so we think they’re important. Yet they only have the meaning that we give them and we are in great danger of being overrun by them. As the years pass, it is the story rather than the stuff that retains its value.

So in order to plumb the depths of my story, I’ve decided to embark upon a journey through my stuff. My goal is two-fold: to explore how these saved items help me remember and tell my stories and to clean my cluttered basement.  That’s because once I’ve written about my things, I intend to get rid of them. I do believe that this is the only process by which I can let them go and be free to move forward with my life story.

I invite you to tag along as I take on this project. May it inspire you to think differently about your own stuff and more importantly, your story. Please feel free to comment about how these writings affect you. I’d like for this to be a conversation.

Now, let the adventure begin!