There are certain things I hang on to. First thing that comes to mind is a little girl's green plastic sandal. It is broken and singular. It was picked out of a heap of trash on the sea shore of a Greek island.
It still sits on my bookshelf. As my granddaughter and I perused the bookshelf last night, she didn't ask what it was. Because, it doesn't look like anything worth asking about.
I found the sandal on the island of Lesvos. It was one of the reminders and remainders of a boat, possibly a rubber dinghy that washed ashore during the great 2016-2019?-exodus from Syria, Africa, and other grief-infested countries.
It is a sober reminder of having worked in a refugee camp. Of pitching in for a week to make a refugee's life just a little better. It is a sober reminder of my vision of a little girl who made it to shore safely; yet the evidence of the surrounding shreds of rubber speak of a different story, a different outcome.
I think the sandal will remain on my study shelf until I am gone, when one of my daughters will barely ponder its significance. It will return to the trash pile in another country-the story forever lost.
There are certain other things I hang on to temporarily: the toys under the kitchen desk after a recent grandchildren visit.
Once, our first grandson put the donkey from the Christmas crèche in a lower kitchen cupboard. When I first opened that cupboard and saw the donkey that carried Mary to Bethlehem, my heart felt enormous warmth. I hope I left it there for a long time.
Most recently when Theo spent the evening, he chose to bring up the pad from the corner downstairs window, and to sleep in the loft next to our bed, rather than sleep alone in the guest room. I welcomed the little bundle to the left as I slept.
When he awoke, after I made him crepes, after we read for an hour, after I took him home, I returned to the loft to find his sleeping quarters tossed about with a drifting sheet and unfolded blankets. It was sweet to imagine his little brown head on the pillow, his small body tucked in the warmth. I would enjoy the empty makeshift bed for the rest of the day. But I didn't put it away, and when the house cleaners came two days later, in a rush to get to school, I didn't have time to put the bedding away.
When I returned, the bed had been neatly made. It was no longer the tousled eyesore of messiness and disorganization. It was a sweet reminder of Theo staying over on a Saturday night.
I am not sure how long I will leave his little bed, his little presence lying in the loft.
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