Untitled Document

The Preservation of Things

For years I lived in a sea of my children’s artwork. When they were younger, their masterpieces graced every surface - not just the requisite refrigerator, but all the walls, the doors, the tables. I scotch-taped their abstract expressionist tempera paintings to the delicate wood wainscoting in the dining room. I propped their magic marker self-portraits on the mantel. We used their laminated construction paper place mats on holidays, until the lamination started to split and they had to be retired. Things have changed, since they’ve grown a bit older. They are ten and twelve now. They still draw and paint, but somehow the urgent need to display it all has passed. I will still prop up the occasional fantastic drawing on the dining room plate rail. The boys pin a few things up in their own room taped to the bunk beds or the bulletin board, but the sheer volume of creation has diminished in the present reality of homework, soccer, and band-practice.

Their years of artwork are now stored in boxes under the futon in our home office. When we started remodeling last summer, I was forced to confront this long-avoided project. The boxes were exploding with paper, the corners splitting. I installed myself in the backyard with the giant blue recycling bin, which my husband cheerfully wheeled out for me saying "Have at it!" He is much better than I am at throwing stuff away, but he also knows that I have to be the one to do it. Somehow in the subtle unspoken ways that roles are determined within a family, I am the custodian of the boys’ artistic creations.

I was determined not to be a pack rat, and I had to work fast, while the boys were at day camp. I don’t know if all children are naturally sentimental, but my own want to keep every single object they have ever created or owned. In our house this includes infant toys, too small t-shirts and stuffed animals they haven’t laid eyes on in five years. All productive purging must be done in their absence. I am also driven by a fierce desire not to live amongst boxes, not to be afraid to throw anything away, to lose the thread, the connection with the past. I am sentimental, too. I struggle with my own, probably inherited tendency to hoard. I know for a fact that my own childhood drawings still languish under my mother’s bed, the manila paper crispy with age. I imagine taking them out and having them turn to yellow dust in my hands.

I started with Henry’s box. Since he is the oldest, it was the most full. I opened it to a mass of different-sized drawings by Henry at age two, age three, age four. It seems he went through several artistic phases: his abstraction year when everything he drew looked like a colorful nothing, although some of these were quite beautiful. They had great titles, which his diligent preschool teachers had the presence of mind to write down on the backs. Titles like "Spinach," and "The Way I Felt When We Saw the Big Train." Then there was the giant face phase when he would fill the page with a large jolly face, usually no body, arms or legs. They all looked similar, but would have very specific titles like "Mom, "Dad" or "My friend Jack." Sometimes a smaller face would appear in the lower corner "Baby Ethan," his new brother. It was hard at first to toss these, but there were so many of them. I decided on one example in each genre, one portrait of each significant person. I mean, how many pictures of "Dad" in brown marker on yellow construction paper does one really need?

The "crafty" projects from Kindergarten were easy to part with: the giant construction paper witch, the innumerable dried bean collages. Then there were the larger works, the tempera paint flaking off in a powdery multicolored rain as I unrolled them. Many of these were collaborations, done at home with his brother in the backyard on their orange plastic easel, labeled in marker on the back: "Henry and Ethan, 1997." Some of these, the least damaged, I did save, sliding them into a poster tube. The others I smashed down unceremoniously into the recycling bin, reminding myself of the joy the kids had in making them. I dispelled the twinge of guilt I felt at discarding anything made by my children’s precious hands by remembering my own belief that art is about process, not just product. I felt good doing this. It was a celebration and at the same time a letting go. It took me over an hour just to do Henry’s box. Ethan’s did not take quite as long. The second child always gets a bit less consideration, the cursory treatment, but it’s all right. By the time I got to Ethan, I just had my system down. I did notice his individual preference for drawing animals, or the fantastic purplish-black creatures he called animals. Many of these I saved. But I jettisoned those that were too similar, or too faded from months displayed on the refrigerator. By the time I finished my head was pounding, but I had completely filled the gigantic blue recycling bin and still had their two half-full boxes of treasures to keep. Back under the futon they would go.

That night, lying in bed, I thought of all those colorful faces, the cardboard with the glued-on glitter and dried pasta sitting out there in the bin, a big secret the kids were unaware of. I knew I would feel a lot better when it was really gone, when the recycling truck came, hopefully when we were not at home. I pictured it all raining down into the truck when the bin was overturned, a cheerful, sparkly outpouring amongst the empty milk jugs and newspaper, bits of radiant torn paper flying.




	The Preservation of Things For years I lived in a sea of my children’s artwork. When they were younger, their masterpieces graced every surface - not just the requisite refrigerator, but all the walls, the doors, the tables. I scotch-taped their abstract expressionist tempera paintings to the delicate wood wainscoting in the dining room. I propped their magic marker self-portraits on the mantel. We used their laminated construction paper place mats on holidays, until the lamination started to split and they had to be retired. Things have changed, since they’ve grown a bit older. They are ten and twelve now. They still draw and paint, but somehow the urgent need to display it all has passed. I will still prop up the occasional fantastic drawing on the dining room plate rail. The boys pin a few things up in their own room taped to the bunk beds or the bulletin board, but the sheer volume of creation has diminished in the present reality of homework, soccer, and band-practice. Their years of artwork are now stored in boxes under the futon in our home office. When we started remodeling last summer, I was forced to confront this long-avoided project. The boxes were exploding with paper, the corners splitting. I installed myself in the backyard with the giant blue recycling bin, which my husband cheerfully wheeled out for me saying "Have at it!" He is much better than I am at throwing stuff away, but he also knows that I have to be the one to do it. Somehow in the subtle unspoken ways that roles are determined within a family, I am the custodian of the boys’ artistic creations. I was determined not to be a pack rat, and I had to work fast, while the boys were at day camp. I don’t know if all children are naturally sentimental, but my own want to keep every single object they have ever created or owned. In our house this includes infant toys, too small t-shirts and stuffed animals they haven’t laid eyes on in five years. All productive purging must be done in their absence. I am also driven by a fierce desire not to live amongst boxes, not to be afraid to throw anything away, to lose the thread, the connection with the past. I am sentimental, too. I struggle with my own, probably inherited tendency to hoard. I know for a fact that my own childhood drawings still languish under my mother’s bed, the manila paper crispy with age. I imagine taking them out and having them turn to yellow dust in my hands. I started with Henry’s box. Since he is the oldest, it was the most full. I opened it to a mass of different-sized drawings by Henry at age two, age three, age four. It seems he went through several artistic phases: his abstraction year when everything he drew looked like a colorful nothing, although some of these were quite beautiful. They had great titles, which his diligent preschool teachers had the presence of mind to write down on the backs. Titles like "Spinach," and "The Way I Felt When We Saw the Big Train." Then there was the giant face phase when he would fill the page with a large jolly face, usually no body, arms or legs. They all looked similar, but would have very specific titles like "Mom, "Dad" or "My friend Jack." Sometimes a smaller face would appear in the lower corner "Baby Ethan," his new brother. It was hard at first to toss these, but there were so many of them. I decided on one example in each genre, one portrait of each significant person. I mean, how many pictures of "Dad" in brown marker on yellow construction paper does one really need? The "crafty" projects from Kindergarten were easy to part with: the giant construction paper witch, the innumerable dried bean collages. Then there were the larger works, the tempera paint flaking off in a powdery multicolored rain as I unrolled them. Many of these were collaborations, done at home with his brother in the backyard on their orange plastic easel, labeled in marker on the back: "Henry and Ethan, 1997." Some of these, the least damaged, I did save, sliding them into a poster tube. The others I smashed down unceremoniously into the recycling bin, reminding myself of the joy the kids had in making them. I dispelled the twinge of guilt I felt at discarding anything made by my children’s precious hands by remembering my own belief that art is about process, not just product. I felt good doing this. It was a celebration and at the same time a letting go. It took me over an hour just to do Henry’s box. Ethan’s did not take quite as long. The second child always gets a bit less consideration, the cursory treatment, but it’s all right. By the time I got to Ethan, I just had my system down. I did notice his individual preference for drawing animals, or the fantastic purplish-black creatures he called animals. Many of these I saved. But I jettisoned those that were too similar, or too faded from months displayed on the refrigerator. By the time I finished my head was pounding, but I had completely filled the gigantic blue recycling bin and still had their two half-full boxes of treasures to keep. Back under the futon they would go. That night, lying in bed, I thought of all those colorful faces, the cardboard with the glued-on glitter and dried pasta sitting out there in the bin, a big secret the kids were unaware of. I knew I would feel a lot better when it was really gone, when the recycling truck came, hopefully when we were not at home. I pictured it all raining down into the truck when the bin was overturned, a cheerful, sparkly outpouring amongst the empty milk jugs and newspaper, bits of radiant torn paper flying.