My parent’s house is full of stuff. They may be upset if they knew I published that.
My brother, sister and I have come and gone over and over, each time taking the treasures we wanted and leaving the junk we didn’t. We came home from college and left movie posters and textbooks. We got married and neglected the wedding RSVP cards that were sent to their house. We visited at Christmas and left our gift wrap and weird-distant-aunt gifts. We stopped by for the weekend with our dog crates and infants’ travel cribs and left the bassinet attachments and rawhide bones. We brought them coffee mugs after we traveled and picture frames after we added one more member to the family.
Last weekend I went home to help clear out some of that stuff. I pulled into their driveway, with a trunk full of empty Rubbermaid containers, and there they were. Brightly standing side by side to welcome me home, faces painted with big smiles and arms already spread wide. A sight I see every time they welcome me home and every time I set off again.
This was fresh on my mind when I read Faraway Things by Dave Eggers this week. This book, beautifully illustrated by Kelly Murphy, tells the story of a boy who lives by the sea and collects treasures washed up on the shore, or “faraway things” as his father had called them. We learn the boy’s father has died, but was the keeper of the lighthouse that stands prominently on the cliff. One day the boy finds a cutlass, only to learn that it belongs to a mariner who hit a sandbar because there was no longer a beacon from the lighthouse. The man offers a trade, the cutlass in return for any of the treasures on his ship the boy pleases. The boy picks out a lantern, which he places at the top of the lighthouse, returning a lost beacon of light to the shore.
If I take one thing from last weekend it’s the realization that, like that cutlass, my little boys are already my faraway things. They are not ours to keep. From the moment they are born our job is to provide them a safe harbor and to prepare them for an unimaginable life at sea. We have to keep our beacon shining, with big smiles and arms already spread wide when they come back home.
#daveeggers
