The Purge
On clutter, childhood, and the endings we rush
I intentionally threw away a piece of my daughter’s childhood. I’d like to say it was an accident but it wasn’t. It all started when I had a brilliant idea to hire an organizer, a woman I spoke to for five minutes whose contact information I found on Facebook, to come into my home and help me “purge.”
Over the course of one long hourly rated day she threw Barbies into bins, rearranged the gift closet, tossed broken plastic…
And somewhere in the middle of all that efficiency, something went wrong.
Here is where I regress.
All kids have their toys, including my own. For my girls, one of theirs was My Little Ponies. Maybe they weren’t the most special but nonetheless they were important. Important enough to save.
J. carried the My Little Pony collector’s manual around in her pudgy little hands and made me read it to her until the pages were tattered. She had a pink denim jacket with pony patches that I individually applied with a heat press just for her.
S. dressed as Rainbow Dash for her first real Halloween, the one where she ran wild until dark and sugar-crashed into a heap of empty candy wrappers. It was the most beautiful costume, with a long glittering train my mother’s helper carried up and down a million steps while it shimmered under the streetlights. And when the My Little Pony play doh kit from Target wouldn’t arrive in time for Christmas, there I was paying triple to have another one rushed from who knows where to find its rightful place under the tree.
Yet it was more than costumes and figurines.
I loved My Little Pony when I was little. I understood. This one was braver, that one kinder. That their favorite pony represented a reflection of themselves.
It was something we shared. And I loved that.
But…
In the throes of organization I made a mistake.
One by one I let the ponies go.
What I didn’t consider is that some objects aren’t clutter.
They are part of our story.
Children stop playing with things long before we’re ready for the evidence to disappear. Just because it’s not cuddled or carted doesn’t mean it is meant to be discarded. Sometimes, in our eagerness to make space, we rush an ending that would have happened on its own terms.
You know the play kitchen set? They first stood on tippy toes to make “lunch,” yet quickly towered over it. I left it for as long as I could even though I knew I couldn’t save it forever. But when we eventually dragged it to the curb, it was long after our last plastic meal had been served. Seeing it sit there waiting for garbage collection, we were accepting a time of transition.
Fast forward.
J. was cleaning her room and found one tiny pony figurine that had been left behind.
“Where are the rest?”
At that moment, I had to tell her they were donated. Nothing I said sounded like enough. We both knew there was no excuse; I should have known better.
I had no choice but to listen to her cry as she had to accept saying goodbye to a piece of her childhood before she was ready, much like I had to accept I couldn’t fix it.
A friend, hearing the story, kindly offered me her daughter’s outgrown ponies.
I declined.
They weren’t my daughter’s dolls. My children didn’t teeth on their hooves. They didn’t shove them into overstuffed backpacks for family vacations. They didn’t knot their manes by grooming them too enthusiastically.
They weren’t their memories. I just want our memories of matte and drool and baby teeth marks back…
That’s the thing no one tells you when they hand you a donation bag and a sense of accomplishment: some things are not clutter. Some things aren’t meant to leave.
I like to imagine the ponies found a loving home somewhere.
But the pit in my stomach reminds me
they already had one.