Our Marvelous Little Toy Stories

Andy should not have given Woody away.

My older daughter daily requests that I play Peter, Paul and Mary's children's album, which opens with the song, "The Marvelous Toy." You know, the one that goes "zip" when it moves, "pop" when it stops, and "whir" when it stands still. The song begins, 

"When I was just a wee, little lad, full of health and joy, my father homeward came one night and gave to me a toy." 

The father knows the toy's strange quirks well and delights in sharing them with his small son. Neither one of them knew just what it was, and I guess they never will. The last verse goes, 

The years have gone by too quickly it seems.
I have my own little boy,
And yesterday I gave to him
My marvelous little toy.

His eyes nearly popped right out of his head,
And he gave a squeal of glee,
Neither one of us knows just what it is,
But he loves it just like me.

It's a delightful nonsense song, and at its heart is the fact that sons grow up to be fathers. They're sharing more than a toy: they're sharing attachment, love, and identity. The child delights in the toy; the father delights in the child. 

 The Toy Story movies capture the special relationship children have with their toys and their make-believe, although the later movies drift from this theme. The end of Toy Story 3 is not merely bittersweet but tragic. Andy should not have given Woody away. The other toys were just toys to him, but Woody was Andy's childhood. The movie portrays this as the unselfish decision - after all, Andy is going to college, where Woody would be a decoration, not a plaything. It doesn't think more than a couple of years into the future. If Andy has a kid someday, he won't be able to give him his "marvelous little toy." We don't know how Woody came to Andy, but Andy's mom says he is "an old family toy."  Why would a nineties kid have a mid-century toy unless someone had saved it for him?

Even if Andy doesn't have kids, is it true that everything from childhood should be decluttered once we're old enough to let it go? In Toy Story 2, Jessie was traumatized when her first owner donated her. Life is long, and Andy may wish back at forty what he gave away at eighteen. In a way, he will never be far from his child self unless he wishes to be. Madeleine L'Engle wrote in Walking on Water, 

Only the most mature of us are able to be childlike. And to be able to be childlike involves memory; we must never forget any part of ourselves. As of this writing I am sixty-one years old in chronology. But I am not an isolated, chronological numeric statistic. I am sixty-one, and I am also four, and twelve, and fifteen, and twenty-three, and thirty-one, and forty-five, and...and...and.... If we lose any part of ourselves, we are thereby diminished. If I cannot be thirteen and sixty-one simultaneously, part of me has been taken away.... For growing up never ends, we never get there. I am still in the process of growing up, but I will make no progress if I lose any of myself on the way.

I'm not proclaiming that we should all hoard everything - but I will say, in defiance of minimalism's creed, that some things do own us, at least partly. A particular scent, song, or fabric could pull you back in time to a person who is gone now. Individualism is lonely without meaningful connection, and these connections don't just extend laterally to our contemporaries. They stretch back into past generations and forward to future ones. We have inherited so much, and how we pass it on, and to whom, is a decision about more than us.

In her book A Place to Belong: Celebrating Diversity and Kinship in the Home and Beyond, Amber O'Neal Johnston writes, 

People are complicated and messy. Families are made of people, so they're also complicated and messy. There's no way around that. And yet, there is still a reason to tie your children to their pasts, even if parts are painful. Learning of varied generational experiences helps our children contextualize their lives in a longer, more complicated story. And while we should certainly consider maturity levels and only share age-appropriate information, we do our children a disservice when we leave off parts of their story in an attempt to shelter them. Oral storytelling has been woven into the fabric of our society from the beginning, and your children won't always be children. They will be torchbearers who carry your family's history on to your grandchildren and beyond. That history is not yours to withhold because your children have rightful ownership of their people's stories." 

We can be more than our past, but we cannot be less. 

I am in that exquisite season when I can share with my own little girl a few favorites from my own childhood--songs, movies, books, games, and toys--and to discover that they are just as marvelous as they were twenty-five years ago, especially those ones which I can remember my parents reading, singing, playing, and watching with me. Some of them, like The Chronicles of Narnia, never really left me, but others, like my Madeline doll, have returned to me after my hiatus from childhood.

My husband and I are so grateful that we can give these to our kids now. Our parents gave us an inheritance, and not just of the little toy bears that we loved when we were small. They gave us attachment, love, and identity wrapped up in these stories and memories. 

It still goes zip when it moves,
And pop when it stops,
and whir when it stands still,
I never knew just what it was
and I guess I never will.