Last week, my daughters had a souvenir cup (specifically, one from the Frozen musical on Broadway) in their playroom, balanced on a chair that had a slanted seat. I moved the chair to clean a spot on the wall behind it, and inadvertently tilted the chair enough that the cup fell onto the ground, cracking down one side. Water began to seep out, all over the floor, and I realised that the cup would never again be functional. I had a moment of regret and sadness, before reminding myself that it was, after all, just a plastic cup. I tossed it into the bin with a shrug. After cleaning up the water spill, I told the girls what had happened and the Cautious Adventurer was especially devastated. She fished the cup out of the bin, cleaned it up and set it up as a pen holder on her desk. For her, the memories it held were too special to see it leave the house just yet.
This incident got me thinking. We tend not to buy too many souvenirs for ourselves, both because they can get expensive and because they take up precious luggage space. In the past, I’ve held the opinion that souvenirs are a bit meaningless once they are unpacked at home, once the destination where they were bought becomes a memory. Perhaps this belief was based upon my experience with souvenirs bought for me by other people from their holidays – they held no memories for me, so I just took them at face value. .
Now, when I look around my house, I can see the little ways that carefully-chosen souvenirs can brighten every day and keep the memories alive. Like the simple cup from a Broadway show, their value is in more than their function.
In my office, one of my pen-holders is a minifig head-shaped mug that I bought at Legoland in California. I smile when I see it as I’m working at my desk. In our entryway, we have a framed Qantas poster from our trip to the Qantas museum in Longreach, Outback Queensland. Our music room is home to a photograph from Niagara Falls (from our first trip, before children, when we could splurge on beautiful art souvenirs!). We have fridge magnets from the Cosmos Centre in Charleville and others from Legoland. The girls have bag tags from various destinations. And some of our favourite souvenirs are ones we can wear: All of the girls have hats bought on holidays – from the San Diego Zoo, Walt Disney World and a whale-watching cruise in Hervey Bay (which has a funny story attached to it, because we had to buy it to replace a different souvenir hat, one bought at the Stockman’s Hall of Fame, which blew off Miss Easily Pleased’s head on the boat cruise out to see the whales!). We have shirts from NYC, Niagara Falls, San Diego Zoo and Bibbidi Bobbidi Boutique, sparkly skirts from the Boutique as well, and lots of Mickey Ears, which are displayed on the girls’ bedroom walls. Many of these items would hold little material value for other people. Their value comes from the memories attached to them for us, and us alone. They are simple things which remind us of happy times as we go about our daily lives.
I’m enjoying a bit of reminiscing today, as we are heading into a fresh school term here in Australia, and the next substantial block of holidays is ten weeks away. It helps to remember the fun times we have had in the past. Our everyday lives are not bad – we are very grateful for the opportunities available to us – but they do involve the same responsibilities that many households with families juggle. We try to find the joy in every day, and sometimes that joy may come in the form of a personal memory or a memory shared in conversation. We are so glad we have a huge bank of happy memories to draw upon, and the little souvenirs dotted around our home just help to trigger those memories with greater frequency. We’ll probably never be huge souvenir shoppers, but I can say with certainty that my perspective on buying them has been changed.
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