And If You See My Reflection In The Snow Covered Hills / Well, The Landfill Will Bring It Down

A few years ago, well into my adulthood, my father said he had a gift for me.  He handed me a tiny pink box, and I immediately waged silent guesses as to what could be in it.  A golden pendant passed down six generations from the old country?  A key to a lockbox in the Swiss Alps or even the local Chase branch?  Maybe a check with a lot of commas, made out to me and folded up tightly as to fit in the tiny box.  I could use a check, as I'd recently lost track of a 401K and was beginning to believe I'd never find it.  Oops.

I cracked open the box, and then rattled its contents around in bewilderment.  Were those...?

"Your baby teeth," he proclaimed.  "Every last one of them."

So much for the check, the lockbox key, or the old country pendant.  My sister and I exchanged glances, like we always did whenever our dad handed over something random that he'd come across in the deep, dark recesses of our childhood home.  Old progress reports from catechism.  Thirty year old Santa's Village bicycle license plates with our names on them.  Attendance certificates from second grade, the year that I quietly suffered through two bouts of strep throat while feverishly half asleep at my desk.  Photos featuring bad 80s hair and ugly Kmart sweaters.  Sometimes those photos were useful in an apex parenting sort of moment.  I'd call my children over and have them inspect the evidence of my 1989 wardrobe.  "Do you think I picked that Donald Duck sweatshirt out?" I'd ask.  "Do you think I had any say in what I wore?  NO.  I had three hideous outfits, each of them purchased at deep discount, and I had to wear them on repeat.  Now get out of here with your UnderArmour and Zara, you spoiled brats."

"What am I supposed to do with these?" I laughed, kind of grossed out by the dental collection.  My old baby teeth were tiny, rotten looking pebbles from an age when our household television had a knob that switched from UHF to VHF.  "Will you be insulted if... I throw them out?"

"They're your teeth," my dad shrugged.  But he seemed visibly disappointed when I dropped them into the trash can without ceremony, little pink box and all.

Are parents supposed to save baby teeth, amassing them in a gruesome collection of crusty enamel only to pass them on some thirty years later during a lull in dinner conversation?  Because that's not what I've been doing.  I pluck the tooth from under the pillow, stick in the smallest denomination of bill I have, and then bury the tooth in the trash under something extra slimy.  True, for the very first tooth that Andy ever lost, I hesitated briefly before committing to the garbage can.  But it was only very briefly, because I'm a busy woman with lots to get done.

Last year, Alex lost a tooth at a friend's house.  "Oh, I lost my tooth," he said to the mom casually, inspecting the bloody molar in his palm.  Then, with a shrug, he threw it away.  The mom, horrified, said, "Don't you want a bag for that?  What about the tooth fairy?"  To which Alex replied, "There is no tooth fairy, and it's not worth the dollar to have to bring it home."

Maybe Alex will take after me (although honestly, he is a mini Chris through and through, even though Chris finds that comparison increasingly insulting as the years go by and Alex grows more annoying.)  What I mean is, maybe Alex will have the same love language as me, which is Throwing Things Out.  My lowest love language, just so everyone knows, is Gifts.  I don't want gifts.  I can buy myself my own stuff.  I hate extra crap.  Also, gifts make me feel guilty, since I am a terrible gift giver.  I shop for gifts and I think that everything is overpriced garbage and maybe I should just give the gift recipient something useful, like eggs.

I throw things out to show my love.  Admittedly, it's a bit of a selfish love language, since much of what I throw out doesn't belong to me, but I maintain that love is somehow being demonstrated.  Who wants to live in a cluttered shithole?  Not me!  Or my loved ones, right?  There was a stretch of time when I would walk into Chris' home office and throw away one large item per week.  I did this for a month and a half, and, to this day, he has never once asked where anything went.  "Where is my collection of interesting scraps of paper?" he has never asked.  "Where is my broken desk clock in the shape of Harry Truman?  What happened to my childhood jump rope?  My folding chair with the rips in the fabric?  Where is my Rubik's Cube with the missing red stickers?  WHERE?"  He has never asked any of this.  But if I had said to him first, "Hey, I'm going to toss out this scratched DVD of 'Howard The Duck' that doesn't play," it might have been a marriage ending fight because someone special once gave him that DVD, and it has sentimental value.

Throwing Things Out is not Chris' love language.  I think his love language is Explaining Game Directions Without Being Interrupted Because He Will Eventually Answer Your Questions So Stop Asking Them Now.

Anyway.  I throw out mementos and broken bits in the same breath.  I'll throw out an old diary and a discarded candy wrapper with the same amount of thought.  Andy won the Illinois Principals Award last year.  I put the certificate on the fridge for a month and then threw it away in the same bag as some used overnight maxi pads.

So proud of this kid!  But I threw this certificate away.

Maybe I go too far with my throwing things out.  True, I don't think many parents would try to convince me to keep the nasty baby teeth, but I did have a moment many years ago when I felt VERY JUDGED.  I was super pregnant with Emily, and we were moving houses in less than a week or two.  I was picking Andy and Alex up from preschool, and they each had backpacks full of subpar art projects.  I simply could not take any more junk into my chaotic house, and so I unloaded it all, by the handful, into the garbage can there in the preschool lobby while the boys waited patiently.  As I finished and we were about to leave, I turned and happened to see the preschool director staring at me.  Staring.  "I'm moving!" I wanted to shout at her.  "I can't pack this shit!  I'm out of boxes!  It's not even that good!  MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!"

So, I won't be one of those older parents who have their adult children over to the house in thirty years' time only to hand over a small box of discarded body parts or old report cards or clearly not art projects saved from preschool.  What will we do when they come to visit?  If I'm not going to be like my dad and hand over dusty childhood items, maybe I'll be like my mother.  I'll put the blood pressure cuff on the kitchen table and we'll all take obsessive turns with it.  I'll seek out illicit gossip about extended family members I really don't like.  I'll wonder aloud what size TV everyone has.

I don't know, maybe I should start saving a few things just so we have something to do.