Dear Things

Sitting here in the living room of my beloved childhood home, I count 13 objects just on the mantelpiece alone. I didn’t put all of them there; they’ve been there since I was a kid. I didn’t buy any of them. There they are: 6 bronze figures, a cigarette holder made from a tiger skull, decorated in silver, a gleaming round gold tray from India. Two brass candlesticks. A heart-shaped slice of wood with our two names carved in it, and the date: 2022. That is the newest thing up there—and even it is already three years old.
if I were to go around this room, I’d fill pages with itemization of a hundred little objects. Bric a brac, tsotschkes (not sure if that’s the spelling) books, books , books. Some may very well be valuable; they certainly are antiques by this time.

“Clutter”, you might say? Just “stuff”? And waaay too much of it.

I could not part with a single one of them! I love them, I’d miss them so, I’d wonder where they are tonight? Is someone else loving them? Are they lying around some restaurant to add to,the atmosphere? Are they lying broken and forgotten in a landfill somewhere?

I’m not a “hoarder”, I don’t save cereal boxes and empty cans and refuse to throw out junk mail ..but, um, I reckon it’s a matter of degree. Because I do love all these little things, they have a hold on me. We have a bond.

The only person (except maybe hoarders of the type I mentioned above) I have encountered who accurately expressed this feeling is Rupert Brooke. His poem The Great Lover is about all the things, objects, that he loved. He mentions plates and cups, sheets, blankets, old clothes, wood, hot water….and even though they arent mortal, like we are, they aren’t immutable, either.
They’ll “play deserter with the traitor breath/ Break the high bond we made, and sell Love’s trust/And sacramental covenant to the dust.”
Oh, yes, these dear things will outlive or at least outlast me: each

“Stays here, and changes, breaks, grows old, is blown/ About the winds of the world, and fades from brains/ Of living men, and dies./Nothing remains.”

My dear old items, they’ll end up separated from each other, and from me and my memories, like those sepia photographs you see on the wall of a Cracker Barrel restaurant.

”O dear my loves! O faithless, once again/This one last gift I give, that after men/Shall know, and later lovers, far removed, /Praise you, ‘All these were lovely’; say, ‘He loved.”

What he said….