A Few Of My Favorite Things

Taking Comfort When Life Goes Sideways

I still don’t feel like writing.

Since I’ve taken a break from cranking on my memoir, my writing brain has downshifted. It’s a relief. I was never one to write every day, even when I operated under a non-negotiable book deadline.

So I won’t.

Instead, because the post Child’s Play from a few weeks back hit a nerve — readers commented and shared it, reliving and reveling in their own favorite childhood toys — I’ll post pictures and a few words about the things that I am drawn to today, some from my kid days, some just because.

Our mantel [see above] is pretty crammed full of stuff so occasionally, we rotate something out. Today there’s a Bullwinkle, a Mr. Peanut Peanut Butter Maker — the box and accessories are elsewhere — a Schroeder doll, the Toot-a-Loop radio mentioned in Child’s Play, and a miniature ship’s wheel. Also a glow-in-the-dark jellyfish glass paperweight, two humidity controls that both need batteries — the mantel is close to the back door so I’m hoping that one day soon I’ll see them and it’ll jog my memory — and a set of four Shaun the Sheep china bowls from the UK.

The roulette wheel came from friends down the street who got it from a woman who got it from a nunnery where the sisters regularly held Monte Carlo nights to raise money. The Henry and Henrietta stuffed animals sit at a child-sized 50s-era kitchen table I found at an antiques store in Cornish, Maine. I had numerous Henry dogs — one as large as a bean bag chair — when I was a kid.

There are several Boris and Natashas hanging around, which is weird because I never cared for the cartoon. But for a few years I had a vanity plate that riffed on their stock line “Moose-and-Squirrel” because in New Hampshire you can get a license plate with a moose on it and who doesn’t want a moose plate?

I thought more people would get the joke, but instead most saw the plate and said, “Hey, that’s my girlfriend’s nickname!” or “You must really like squirrels!” After receiving only a few comments delivered in a growly Cold War Soviet accent, I opted for a normal, anonymous plate. Plus, it comes in handy when my foot gets heavy.

The bar/catchall is made from the pedal base of an old organ, and a few years back when we saw it in the same antique store in Arundel, Maine where I found the Bunny Band, we snapped it up. It holds up a multicolored sheep that resembles Shirley in the Shaun the Sheep cartoons, various bottles of liquids, a rarely-used vacuum, and a blood pressure monitor sans cuff. It’s also the Bunny Band’s new home. I wind one of them up each morning while I wait for the coffee to brew. It makes me happy.

The green lamp on the right is an asparagus lamp. The story there is that a couple of decades ago, I was at a flea market in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and saw a humungous lamp where the base was a bundle of giant asparagus. I had just arrived at the flea market so I told myself I would return, but of course, you know the rest of the story… I went back to look for it later and either someone else had snapped it up [hard to fathom] or I couldn’t remember its exact location.

For the last twenty years, I’ve rued my loss. Last year, my husband rustled one up for my birthday after years of searching. He’s my hero.

Lately, for some reason, I’ve been drawn to ride-on animals from the 1930s and 40s [I think that’s the era] that have seen much better days.

They’re worn in spots — the bear looks like a zombie started working on him but then changed its mind — and tires are missing as well as eyes. I bought the donkey [I think it’s a donkey] in Rockport, Maine, over the summer, and encountered the bear on Sunday in Quechee, Vermont. When I hesitated about the bear and texted photos to Alex, he texted back this:

“Oh, a little sad. You should get him so that we can patch him up.”

We both lean heavily towards the Charlie Brown Christmas Tree end of the scale. I reminded him of this, and he replied: “I think history imprints on things, and humbleness has a lot of merit. The new and the shiny can never really compete…”

Indeed. And just maybe as I unearth more memories I am patching myself up little by little, while also leaning more towards the battered and broken that I encounter in real life. Kindred spirits and all.

As I’ve mentioned, I sometimes use childhood things as prompts. But also, perhaps more importantly, some of them represent a part of my childhood that was happy, something I could control, and that was mine and mine alone. After all, autonomy and agency are rare for a child.

As I finish up this post and am gently reminded how a couple of photos can be excellent prompts for someone who [currently] doesn’t want to write, Elissa Altman’s latest Poor Man’s Feast popped into my email.

The title: “the year of I'm so tired.”

That pretty much says it all.

In the coming month — and years — people will turn to a variety of things to help take the edge off life.

As for us, we like to surround ourselves with stuff that makes us happy, from Schroeder dolls to beaten-down ride’em animals.

Sometimes, it really takes so little. Turns out, that’s a good life philosophy.

The Takeaway: Be gentle with yourself. What are a few things that you take comfort in when you get upset or stuck or frustrated? Perhaps you should gather them up now so they’re close at hand. After all, as the month of other people’s celebrations and expectations looms — as well as the coming year full of unknowns — it helps to be prepared. Have the items that make you happy — inanimate or otherwise — within easy reach. That way you can be proactive in calming yourself when things flare up.

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What things do you turn to that provide instant comfort? Feel free to leave a comment below and post a photo or two. Thank you.