Dutiful new parents that we were, we kept everything, even putting frames up that allowed us to display the most recent few pieces. Our refrigerator, kitchen cabinets, and bulletin board overflowed with crooked hearts, hand-traced turkeys, spaghetti-limbed self-portraits, and the Batman logo, drawn repeatedly during my youngest son's Caped Crusader phase.
I've confessed that I come from a strong genetic line of paper hoarders, and nobody loved a stack of dusty old papers like my Dad. My mom kept boxes of random tokens from our childhood, including some of my first writing projects, my siblings' and my trophies, and various other items documenting our big and small achievements.
I did all I could to fight those urges emanating from that dominant Hoarder Gene, as my sister and I have come to refer to it. I knew I couldn't keep it all, and the piles and piles of art seemed to grow each week exponentially.
and the piles and piles of art seemed to grow each week exponentially. A few years ago, I sorted through three large storage containers and culled it down to one box of the most significant masterworks. Particularly cute or funny things were kept, and anything from a coloring book or template was tossed. It was a lovely trip down memory lane, watching their handwriting change as they evolved into their own styles. I fondly recalled days when fingerpaints dotted with Cheerios on paper made for a perfect pre-nap activity. I found crumbling Play-Doh creatures imprinted with googly eyes, the original artistic intention lost to time and my failing memory.
Based on the volume of the artwork we'd collected in the first six and eight years of my kids' lives, I figured we'd be set for another few when we'd go through the next toppling-over pile and conduct the same exercise of review and refuse.
But something terrible happened. The river of art slowed to a trickle and recently stopped almost completely.
Don't get me wrong, we are still drowning in paper, but it's all the boring things like spelling tests, permission slips, or report cards. I'm sure I'm supposed to be excited about those things, but if I'm honest, who cares?
Where have the landscapes of castles and dragons gone? The soggy, tilted milk-carton birdhouses? The paper-plate mask treasures tied with white string, eye holes just enough off center to make wearing it and walking at the same time a treacherous endeavor?