The Other Stuff Box

There are plastic bins in my garage with my children's names on them. They've been there for years. Through moves. Different houses. Different stages of their lives. I am a nostalgic person. I've always kept things from my own life, so I suppose it was inevitable that I would start keeping little pieces of theirs too.

A drawing.

A report card.

A favorite toy.

Something they made at school.

Things that didn't really belong anywhere else.

Other stuff.

Over the years, each child ended up with a bin. I kept filling them. They kept walking past them. Until recently.

My son had borrowed some chairs for a concert and wandered over the next morning to return them. When he'd picked up the chairs, he'd noticed the bins and boxes in the garage with his name on them. Normally, he walked right past them without another thought. For whatever reason, this time he didn't.

"What's in those?"

His particular other stuff box had been sealed in a plastic bin and zip-tied shut three moves ago. It hadn't been opened in more than ten years. We dug through the toolbox looking for something to break the zip ties. Then we pulled off the lid.

There were a few things belonging to one of the grandchildren sitting on top, so we moved those aside. Then we started digging.

Old report cards. "Nope. I don't need to relive those." He laughed and moved on.

There were old drawings.

Baby clothes.

His favorite Pokémon character in stuffed-animal form, apparently important enough that we had it in two sizes.

His first pair of cowboy boots.

Magnets he'd made at school.

One by one, pieces of a childhood he'd mostly forgotten came out of the box. "Wow, I forgot about that." "When did I do this?" He studied some of his old artwork closely. "Wow. These suck."

I laughed.

He knew I disagreed. Not necessarily with the artistic assessment. Some of them were pretty rough. But he made them. That had apparently been enough for me to keep them through three moves and more than a decade.

There was one thing he kept avoiding. The folder labeled “REPORT CARDS.” He'd see it. Look at it. Move on to something else. Apparently there are some parts of childhood even nostalgia can't make you eager to revisit.

We eventually carried a handful of discoveries into the house. Around the table, he showed everyone what we'd found. The tiny cowboy boots received a collective "Awww." Followed by considerably more laughter.

We talked about when the kids were younger. Stories came back. One memory reminded someone of another. For a while, pieces of years we hadn't talked about in a long time were sitting around the table with us.

The next day, my seven-year-old grandson noticed the magnets his uncle had made in school. We decided they belonged back on the refrigerator. He and his two-year-old sister carefully went through them, choosing their favorites and adding them to the collection already covering the door.

I stood there watching my grandchildren decide which pieces of their uncle's childhood deserved refrigerator space. We even found some that their mom had made when she was young and added those too.

Apparently some things don't belong in the other stuff box forever. Some things get another turn.

Back at the table the day before, there had been one piece of the box my son still hadn't been able to leave alone. He stood up and went back into the garage. A few minutes later, he returned carrying the folder. He couldn't resist.

The report cards.

He opened them. One year. Then another. Then another. It didn't take long for a theme to develop. Great kid. Smart. Capable. Needs to focus.

The wording changed from teacher to teacher and year to year, each one finding an increasingly polite way to deliver essentially the same message. He laughed. Apparently some things hadn't been forgotten after all.

Before he left that first day, he went through the box again and chose a handful of things to take home with him. A few little pieces of himself he hadn't known were still sitting in my garage. I looked at everything that remained. "Do you want me to get rid of the rest?"

No.

He wanted me to keep it. At least for a while longer. So I put everything back. The artwork that apparently sucks. The school projects. The things he made. The things he wore. The evidence that generations of teachers had politely begged him to pay attention.

All the things that had once seemed important enough to save and then spent more than ten years inside a plastic bin waiting for someone to remember them. I put the lid back on.

I've carried those boxes through three moves. For years, I've wondered when my kids would finally want them. Or when they'd tell me it was okay to throw everything away. Maybe I've been thinking about them wrong. They're not really boxes of childhood things.

They're pieces of lives that moved too quickly for any of us to know what would matter later.

When I saved his first cowboy boots, I couldn't have known that someday a grown man would hold them up at a family table and make everyone laugh. When I saved those drawings, I couldn't have known he'd study them years later and critique his childhood artistic ability. When I tucked away those report cards, I couldn't have known we'd someday sit together laughing as teacher after teacher confirmed something we already knew about him.

I just kept them.

Other stuff.

That's what I've always called those boxes. Nothing particularly valuable. Nothing anyone else would have a reason to keep.

Just little pieces of ordinary lives that somehow survived.

Before he left, my son took a few of those pieces with him. The rest are back in the garage. His name is still on the box. Apparently my job isn't finished yet.

So I'll keep holding on to them.

For a while longer.