Triggers

A walk down memory lane can be a dicey thing sometimes, I've learned. You don't always know what will pop up and it might not always be happy.

I took Kathy to see "Toy Story 3" (3D) this afternoon -- after all, I'm home this entire weekend (including Monday), not packing to fly out somewhere for a few weeks, and for once our schedules happened to mesh. The movie was recommended backchannel by "The Mackster" as being the best of the three. I agree.

But when we left Kathy was fighting back tears because the closing scenes hit a trigger. It turns out she had two very special dolls, much the way Andy regards Woody in the movie, and she had planned to pass them down to her children. That dream ended in the warehouse fire in Iran (set by a revolutionary) in which her family quite literally lost everything but what they wore, and the contents of their suitcases. They were moving back to the U.S. -- where Kathy would soon become like me, a stranger in the strange land called California.

37 years she's borne this particular loss in silence, but the movie broke that silence. May this be her needed healing over the loss, one of several born of that Revolution.

And that makes me think about the daughter in college whose rag doll (Dolly) has been stitched back together so many times I think that all that's left are the repairs. She's had Dolly for longer than she can remember.

Me? All my childhood toys are long gone and mostly forgotten. Outside of a number of books and a few "Things of Science" 1960s monthly projects for kids, my longest-held possession is a little red "Tot" stapler I bought from Nugent's (is it still there?) on the Circle when I was about to start 7th grade at Central Intermediate.

Oh no. That cascades into more memories... does anyone else remember the "Keen" notebooks?