“The point of life isn’t to prolong youth, but to have grown up. That requires discarding things along the way, and enjoying the appropriate relief.”
In her article “Throw Away Your Children’s Art” in The Atlantic, Mary Townsend contends that “What parents do with children’s art depends on what they think about the nature of childhood, nostalgia, and beauty.” And with this she proposed that we should all be throwing our children’s art away, accepting the “ephemeral qualities of childhood.”
Your pride lasts longer than the child’s does. Eventually, and soon, it must move on to another venture. Theirs always does, but yours lingers, heartstrings tugged.
It’s the wish to prolong this moment artificially, I think, that motivates the urge to keep and curate your children’s art for posterity. You convince yourself there’s some future where your child will want to return to that moment of pride and love through the act of witnessing the thing she made so long ago.
Don’t fall for it. You’re only trying to make yourself feel better. You’ll never quite be able to tell which moment your children will remember, and it’s not as if you can regulate that memory on their behalf anyway. And besides, childhood is made from a thousand moments just like this. There’s no way to hold on to all of them.
It’s a compelling argument, reminiscent of that in The Life-changing Magic of Tidying up: cherish who you are now; thank your unused things and then let them go.
I’ve gone back to kicking that sugar habit to the curb (#ketolife) but this layer cake guide on Bon Appetit had my mouth watering! It goes through all of what to do (and what not to do) to get those perfect layers when you cut the cake. I’ll be bookmarking it.
On the semi-related subject of healthy choices, I’ve started a 6-week workout and this Sunday is our second meet-up. We all check in and do a workout together and then we’re on our own for the week. I’ve done really well at sticking to it!
Tonight is Skyler’s preschool picnic and then tomorrow we have a soccer game and we’re going to see Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis at the UC Davis Mondavi Center. It “features three extraordinary dancers interpreting everything from snakes to chickens: Charles “Lil Buck” Riley and Myles Yachts, specialists in a street dance called jookin’; and tap dancer Jared Grimes.” I’m really looking forward to it! And, if there’s time, we’ll fit in a visit to the Capay Valley for the Capay Crush Festival.
I’d also like to see a movie again one of these days. We just went to see Blackkklansman, which was really impactful, and I’m wondering what else we should put on our must-list. Any suggestions?
We were sorry to leave our place among the olive trees, but we weren’t going far. To be honest, I had no idea just how close the two villages I’d chosen for our last week in Puglia would be. With little guidance as to which of the many seaside spots would suit us best, the process of choosing wasn’t far off from pointing randomly at the map.
I’d liked the look of Santa Cesarea, with its Moorish dome of the nineteenth-century Villa Sticchi clinging to the rocks, overlooking the Adriatic; and I’d found a well-priced hotel, with sea views and a restaurant that had rooms available. A combination of Google Images and hotel booking sites led us to what turned out to be a lovely jumping off point for more sightseeing on the Adriatic coast of the Salento—the heel of Italy, the peninsula of Puglia.
