Up the Valley: Keepers

Is attachment to inanimate objects – and their boxes – an obsession, or a future annuity on Ebay?
Today’s column in the St Helena Star

There are certain aspects of personality that were as evident in us during childhood as they are at middle age. I came to this realization recently, while combing through my outdoor trash bin in the middle of the night.

As a child, my mother gave me an Easter gift of a tin wind-up rabbit with calico-pattern terrycloth overalls, which played the tune: “Here Comes Peter Cottontail.” I adored this toy, playing it so many times that the tiny Easter-egg adorned crank finally broke. My mother threw the toy in the trash, and tried to stifle my sobs by buying another. But I had no interest in this replica, longing instead for my broken but best-loved bunny. As soon as my mother’s back was turned, I went out to the garbage and rescued the rejected rabbit, cleverly concealing it as an obvious lump in the middle of my bedroom rug.

Flash forward 50 years. I still have this unshakable emotional attachment to inanimate objects, none more than my small glass microwave rice cooker from Japan. Dating back to my first house, it survived half a dozen moves, several makeshift repairs of its plastic parts, and hundreds of batches of flawless steaming rice. It had a little rubberized lid that popped into the pot with a satisfying “shwoomp” — like the sound of a Mercedes sedan door closing, or of one of those high-end kitchen cabinet drawers gliding smoothly back into position.

During my last house move, my little glass cooker disappeared, sending me down the rabbit hole of replacement shopping. I tried electric rice-makers, BPA-free plastic models, pre-packed boiling bags, and good old-fashioned boiled water on the stove. None brought me the joy of diving into my treasured little glass pot with its plastic paddle. Online research revealed that the Japanese manufacturer once released an identical model — but in pink, with Hello Kitty logos all over it. Pink! Hello Kitty! I want this so badly, it has become my Holy Grail, although its existence may merely be Japanese urban legend, along with safe nuclear plants, heterosexual samurai, and Godzilla.

Recently I was rearranging boxes in storage when I discovered — to my delight — my beloved rice cooker. For one glorious meal, we were blissfully reunited — the plastic paddle dipping once more into the perfectly sized glass receptacle to retrieve no-fuss fluffy rice; it was like dinner for two with a long-lost friend. But while washing the glass container in the sink, I became distracted by the shrill barking of an unruly dog-in-residence, and I dropped it — watching in horrified slow motion as it shattered into pieces.

I blamed myself, blamed the dog, blamed the gods, and threw the lot into the trash (not the box, of course — I might need its markings to find another, the rationalized retention of empty boxes being one of my particular neuroses). But at 2 a.m., contemplating a bleak future without my rice cooker, I hatched a plan. Suppose I could replace the glass receptacle? Why don’t I search for something glass to fit that self-sealing lid, just as Prince Charming combed the kingdom looking for a perfectly proportioned foot to fit his favorite glass slipper? I jumped out of bed and ran outside in my PJ’s to retrieve the non-glass pieces from the bin, like a raccoon raiding the trash under the cover of darkness.

The next day I pulled out a Pyrex measuring cup and — in a moment that must have resembled the day ancient humans discovered the wheel — placed the rice cooker lid on top, pushed down, and heard that familiar “shwoomp.” I set the glass cup on the rice cooker’s base and — incredibly — it fit! I rushed to the phone to inform my best friend of this miracle. Unfortunately she is a therapist, and my discovery did not please her. “This just reinforces your problematic tendency to hold onto material objects that weigh down your life,” she opined, free of charge. It’s true, but honestly — this wasn’t going to change anyway. I’ll always regard the empty box that once held my favorite discontinued eye cream as a historical artifact, and will collect broken pieces of my good china because — you never know — I might want to make a mosaic.

All this madness seemingly started with that damn wind-up wabbit. I wonder how today’s children handle their planned-obsolescence playthings, with the computer chip playing “Here Comes Peter Cottontail” set to expire after a predetermined number of repetitions. Do preschoolers simply pop open the back and rewire the circuitry or hack into an alternate power source? Or do today’s toddlers welcome disposability, knowing that yesterday’s broken bunny provides an excuse to upgrade to tomorrow’s iRabbit, which not only plays “Here Comes Peter Cottontail,” but downloads similar songs via Wi-Fi, organizes playdate schedules and synchs with the mouth-controlled SmartTeether™ to play ringtones, text fellow tots and change the channel on the television set?

Although my tin toy rabbit is now a high-priced collectible on eBay, it’s probably best to teach your youngsters to recycle their treasures. Otherwise they may be doing some moonlight dumpster diving 50 years from now.

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Overstuffed

I know that people often say that brick-and-mortar retail stores are in danger because of the economy, but I really think it has more to do with people being in the mood for divestiture as opposed to acquisition.  I know that we humans are supposed to be hardwired hunter gatherers, but that trait traces back to the days of cavemen, who rarely maintained stockpiles of storage boxes in adjacent caves.

When I go shopping now, I not only dread the idea of adding more items to my collection of detritus, but also the shopping bags and packaging in which the items were sold.  I have often thought that the US Dollar should be replaced by the fancy paper handle bag as our form of currency, as this would stimulate the economy, and I would have amassed a depository rivaling Fort Knox.  When I moved last year from my home of many years, my friends stood in slack-jawed wonder at my need to retain countless empty glossy boxes that once held cosmetics and perfumes, piles of plastic cd cases, and stacks of empty electronics boxes, retained in case I needed to return  items I had long ago discarded.

In Today’s Column in the Star, I discuss the collection of “stuff” and the need to endlessly move it from Point A to Point B and back again.   Can you relate?  What is it that you can’t throw away that you wish you could?

Up The Valley: Overstuffed

• Laura Rafaty
• May 24, 2012

St. Helena society enjoys certain rituals that are certainly repeated elsewhere. One of those is the school-day wave.

Being a childless spinster, I first heard about this from a friend with kids in school. Here’s how it goes: Parents (and by this I mean one parent, because the other one is busy) have a narrow window of 30 minutes to drop off their multiple children in front of multiple schools in multiple locations around town. The streets are clogged with parents making the identical rounds, waving at one another as they go.

Running this circuit confers membership in the wave brigade, a tightly knit society in which outsiders are conspicuous and scrutinized. If you buy a new car, it will take some time before you are recognized and acknowledged with your wave. If you are a man using your girlfriend’s car, call your lawyer because the brigadiers have already run her license plate number and know who she is and what you’ve been up to.

For practical parents, this ritual is uncharacteristically inefficient. Any McKinsey or Bain Capital consultant running for president will tell you that multiple parents dropping off multiple children at multiple locations is a waste of time, effort and fuel. After lengthy and expensive study, the consultant’s recommendation would be to simply swap children, so that all of the elementary-schoolers are in the same households, the high-schoolers in others, and so on.

Of course, you people are attached to your children and may object. This is the kind of emotional decision-making that holds America back and prevents us from taking our rightful place among heartless nations with stable currencies. Still, the plan is probably flawed anyway, since no household would be willing to take just the middle-schoolers.

While I am not in the wave brigade, I sympathize with the effort required to deposit one’s offspring and collect them on school days, not to mention on weekends for sporting and social events. I myself participate in a similar ritual almost every weekend, and some weekdays too, pertaining to the repeated relocation of my personal effects, priceless belongings and the detritus of my existence, or what the late George Carlin would call my “stuff.”

Here’s how it goes: I take my stuff, wrap it, box it, strap it to a cart, and move it from point A to point B. Then the following weekend I move it to point C, followed soon thereafter by the inevitable retreat to point A. When I am not moving my own stuff from points A through C and back to A again, I am moving my store’s stuff, or my customers’ stuff, or my friends’ stuff. I even move my pets’ stuff.

How did I get all this stuff? And why is it so hard to get rid of?

You parents are lucky; your kids will eventually move to Point B and on to Point C without your active participation. My stuff, on the other hand, will never move anywhere on its own.

There are several reasons why I am doomed to move stuff for all eternity.

First, I once had money to buy a second home, and the real estate market allowed me to sell that second home and purchase another, and so on. All those homes required their own stuff, including the basic stuff, like silverware, and the other stuff, like bobble-head dolls.

Second, I no longer have money, as a result of which my second homes were sold, sending all that stuff back to commingle with my other stuff.

Third, I moved my St. Helena home twice and then downsized, so there is less room for stuff.

Fourth, I moved my retail store and then closed it, moving the same stuff inside the store, between stores, and back and forth to storage. Plus I sold stuff and delivered it so that it could become my customers’ stuff.

Fifth, I am emotionally attached to every bit of this stuff.

An example: Producing a play in San Francisco, I furnished the actors’ apartments with stuff, including a glass salad bowl purchased for $6 at Target in Burlingame. When the show closed, the bowl moved to my first New York apartment on 47th Street, then to my second apartment on 83rd Street, and then — stay with me — to my beach house in California. Then it moved to my last New York apartment on 72nd Street, and back to my storage unit in St. Helena, finally landing in my current St. Helena home. At this point, I have spent $1,000 on this $6 bowl, easy.

All of this moving requires help from friends, which means that I have to help them, and so on. Which is why I will rarely have a weekend free for the rest of my life.

I sometimes think it would have been easier to have kids. Except that they would move out eventually, leaving all of their stuff behind.

(Laura Rafaty is a national award–winning columnist, a resident of St. Helena, a Tony-nominated producer, author, attorney, and retailer as PennalunaNapaValley.com. Read more at LauraRafaty.com.)