Like this:

There was no school last Friday, and I decided the time had come tackle Sam’s room.  I always get a little emotional going through the dresser and packing up clothes that are clearly too little.  It’s especially hard for me when they are old favorites, like his Super Mario Brothers shirt that was worn as soon as it came out of the laundry all last year, or the old Insect Fear Film Festival T-shirts from his annual visits to this campus event with our friend Bob.  I wish there was some way to keep just a scrap for sentimental value. I’ve seen wonderful quilts made out of special old t-shirts, but I know better than to hang on to them with the crazy notion that I would ever actually do something like that.  I quickly dropped the precious shirts in a paper grocery bag and reminded myself not to be silly.

When I pulled the middle dresser drawer open, I saw this velvet box, opened to show the contents.  There was a wooden dragon’s head, part of a broken incense burner purchased by Amy at Stronghold Castle’s Medieval Fair.  There were several shiny rocks from a rock collection passed on to us from a graduate student at our old church before he moved away.  There was also a Styrofoam ball, painted to look like an eyeball.  I guess that this came from a Halloween party, but I don’t know when or where.  The box itself was passed down to Maggie from one of her favorite grade school teachers, who retired after Maggie’s fifth grade year.  I stared at the display for a second, admiring it.  The collection was a little work of art, hidden back there in the dresser drawer.

The box reminded me of that song from the movie The Littlest Angel, starring Johnny Whittaker.  Does anyone else remember this?  I had the record as a kid and I loved a song called “I have saved”, which lists the contents of the littlest angel’s special box, which he somehow manages to bring to heaven with him.  After an unsuccessful search for the lyrics, I found the contents in Bing Crosby’s song: Just a butterfly with golden wings/A little piece of hollow log/Two shiny stones from a river bank/And the worn out strap from his faithful dog.

Children are natural collectors, usually considering more than the resale value of an item and the space it occupies when deciding whether or not to hang on to it.  I once had a huge collection of party napkins in such a box.  I remember my  mom and grandma  saving napkins from special events to bring home to me.  Of course, I left the box intact.  In fact, I quit cleaning altogether, took a picture, sat down to look for the song lyrics, and ended up writing this post. Maybe I’ll get back to it later.  Maybe I won’t.  I don’t know why I always think of clutter as such a bad thing.

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