Bright Things #9: Homemade Kid Gifts
One of the themes of The Memory Collectors is our relationship to physical objects — the memories, emotions, and power they hold for us. Every week leading up to the book’s release, I’ll share the story of an object that’s special to me.
I have so many of these it was hard to pick which ones to photograph. The more I look around our house, the more I find, cards and pictures stuck on the refrigerator, framed on the walls, tucked into drawers and in the corners of bookshelves. I love the spontaneous, free outpouring of creativity and love in all of these bits of paper, marker, and glitter glue. They remind me of the joy that comes from making things just for fun, from uninhibited self-expression.
These days my child’s creative outlets have become more sophisticated. Last Christmas she made a comic for her father, and gifted me a song she wrote and performed on her ukelele. Over the months of the pandemic she’s gotten more interested in digital art and animation. She’s been working on a secret project, logging close to 100 hours on something that will be unveiled over the holidays. I have no idea what it is, although I see her sneaking props into her bedroom — a toque, a skipping rope, an oven mitt. I cannot wait to see what she’s created.