The Longest Shortest Time

No Lions, Etc., Allowed in This Room!

Recently my mom has been bringing over boxes filled with stuff from my childhood bedroom. Stuff like this:

I look at things like my first pair of shoes and I wonder, Do I want these? Does a person hang on to her own baby shoes? Or are they the sorts of things that a mother hangs onto? If I keep them, will they just go in the attic for years and years until one day I pass them down to Sasha and she has to figure out what to do with them? On the other hand, can a person just toss her first shoes in the trash?

Then, in another box I found this:

I can remember making this sign so vividly. I was three or four and having nightmares about a lion in my closet (I think he was wearing a blue shirt and giant red baseball cap) and a tiger that sat menacingly on my shelf. My mom offered to make me this sign to hang on my door to keep the beasts out . . . and it worked! But then other creatures of the night crept in, among them robbers and gorillas, apparently. Every time something new cropped up I’d get my mom to add it to the list. I decorated the sign with stamps of children’s book covers and baby animals (interestingly, one is a baby gorilla). I remember we even made an abbreviated sign for when I slept at my grandma’s house. I had completely forgotten about this technique for qualming my bedtime fears and I am so glad my mom kept the sign in a box because I am totally going to try this out when Sasha starts being afraid of monsters.

Now that Sasha’s been around for two years I’ve accumulated a bunch of her stuff. First Halloween costume (a ladybug), little sparkly blue jellies, her first school artwork (which, when I ask her who made it, she says, “Danielle,” her teacher). I feel attached to all of this stuff, but do I save it? And for how long? I’m definitely keeping the books we make together. As well as her first drawing that she identified as something real—made with a pen she grabbed from my purse—which I recently framed.

Okay, your turn. What are you saving and why? Is there anything your mom has passed down to you that you’ve kept?