“I have a collection of collections,” my daughter said. She didn’t want to be pinned down and commit to one. She still goes through phases and her collections change. It was once Sesame Street character purses now it’s headbands. Or giraffes. Stuffed and as wall decor.
I was thinking of things I’ve loved, such as elephants, and how I’ve never stopped loving them. Or how I could never toss my Bazooka Joe wrappers. As a kid I imagined someday wallpapering a bathroom with them. Now they sit in little baggies. I saved them up to turn them in for a prize. At some point it was more fun to collect and acquire and keep them. Now I have 100’s or maybe a 1,000.
Prompt:
1. Write a list of five to fifteen of your top collections. Here’s my list. Hi Cissy, I think it is brilliant.
- seaglass
- poetry books
- Bazooka Joe (see right)
- perennial flowers
- petunias
- journals
- spoons and mugs from the Kam Man market
- greeting cards
- quotes
- big earrings
2. Pick one from your list and free-write about it for 12 to 15 minutes.
Keep the hand moving.
Don’t over think and let anything and everything that wants to emerge up and out.
Share if you like.
Have fun.
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I don’t collect things, I don’t think, mostly because I’m not a collector of things and partly because my husband doesn’t like material stuff. I used to collect shoes until after we married and he made me feel guilty when another box showed up in the mail from Zappos. Now, compared to most women, I have so few shoes, I often don’t have a pair any longer to wear with the fancy dresses I wear only on occasion.
What happens when you become a mother, leave the work force, and no longer find dressing up fun? You get rid of your shoes. And your suits. And your dresses. Only to realize that really, you just need one good, long black dress and a strappy pair of black heals. One is really all you need.
Years ago, maybe a dozen or more years long past, my husband and I backpacked around the world for a year. Do you know what’s interesting? I came back with 2 or three things I never even used. I carried these items with me to over 20 countries, on trains, planes, boats, buses, and countless walks for a “just in case” moment that never occurred. And so I wonder, how many “just in case” moments are we waiting for in life? How much should we prepare for these moments, saving and storing, collecting and hoarding?
Most recently, I have found that I do in fact collect things. I collect time. With two children and time that is most often no longer mine to savor, I hoard time. I don’t make plans with others unless I really want to give my time away. I don’t do anything extra that requires the stealing of my time. I have become possessive and greedy of my time and feel unabashedly guilt-free about this for the first time in my life. But time is not something one can stockpile. You cannot store it up or save it to be used another day. Time is different. It must be used at once. And once it’s used, it’s gone forever. Until the next moment. When I hoard it once again, but only for that moment.