Our guest blogger Ani Sarkisian continues to have us in fits of laughter this week with her hilarious take on mamahood and her touching words about what it means to be a mother.
Marie Kondo, the author of The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, is really having a year. I feel like everyone I know is ‘Sparking Joy’ (her second book is called Spark Joy – an illustrated guide to tackling every book and cranny in your home). It’s wonderful, and I for one really feel the rest of my life fall into place when my possessions are edited and in order… too bad they’re currently spread over three continents, but that’s another story.
I’ve been promising my parents to help clean out the attic for over 10 years. I know that’s pretty much just something you say, and never actually plan to do, but I love our attic, I feel like Indiana Jones up there. I’ve found Irish whiskey mugs from a casino in Vegas in the 60’s. I found my mom’s high school portrait, her charm bracelet, pictures she and my dad took on a trip to Paris in the 70’s. I found the overalls I wore when I was two in amongst the Christmas stuff. Vintage baby clothes, you guys!
Imagine my surprise when I pulled out two boxes labeled “For Ani’s Kids” in my dad’s hieroglyphic hand. I opened the boxes to find stacks and stacks of beautiful children’s books. Books that I remembered, and some that I didn’t, but books that immediately sent me into a time warp. Sesame Street books, pre-Elmo. Multiple copies of Pat the Bunny and Goodnight Moon, loved to shreds. Poetry books from when I got a little older and thought I’d be the next Emily Dickinson (before I actually read Emily Dickinson and thought I might rather be the next Patti Smith). My copies of The Grinch and The Little Engine that Could, The Polar Express and Owl Moon. Many of them have my name written backwards, which I believe is a standard kindergartner “privacy setting.”
My baby was overjoyed; he loves books, and immediately claimed them. His teeth marks joined mine. We read them together and while away the afternoon. He thumbs through the pages and comments on them, enthralled. I marvel that the “first books,” chunky board books with a single word on each page and pictures of things like rotary phones and TVs with antennas, are obsolete.
I watch my son enjoy the same books I did and my heart feels connected in a web – I know I never thought it possible to love anyone the way I love my son, and I know my mom felt the same way about me. And STILL feels that way about me. It makes me understand the pain in her face when I fled to college in New York City. It makes me understand why she threatens to call the police in Dublin when I haven’t been in touch for a couple days, or why it hurts her so badly when I’m in a jam, or unhappy. I finally understand what she means when she says, “No really, I don’t want anything for Christmas, I just want you here.” Watching my son on Christmas morning, I totally got it.
The books I read as a child opened me up to the world and fuelled my curiosity for discovery long before I was old enough to understand what that means or how valuable it was. Finding these books has given me a time machine. I remember some little things: a little paper phone that comes off a hook, a little wallet with paper money, a mop with yarn with Sesame Street’s Bert hiding behind it, a mouse holding a key and guarding a red, ripe strawberry. I imagine my mom selecting those books with care, and I remember her reading a lot of them to me. I even remember the EXACT way my mom read some of the lines, inflection and emphasis, etc, and I realise I do the same when I read them now. Some of them have inscriptions from my mother: “To Ani, Love Mommy and Daddy, Christmas 1987,” and I wonder what my face looked like when I opened them. They say your sense of smell is the one most connected to your memory and the smell of those books makes me remember the safety and security of being a kid listening to a story, they always remind me of home; when I’m homesick in Dublin nothing beats curling up with a book with my baby.
2016 is going to be the year I tackle the attic, for real this time. I hope you reach your de-cluttering goals, too! But while you’re emptying closets and tossing books and momentos, maybe take a small box and put it aside with favourite books your kid grew out of, things that spark her joy. Things she’d never remember unless you remind her, 30 years later, when she’s pretending to clean out the attic.
Ani is a writer currently based in Dublin. Find her on Twitter and Instagram @AniMSarkisian, or at TheSaltyCookie.org.
