Change

When my kids were younger we had splattered so much paint and glue on our dining table, and gouged it with leather craft tools, that I suggested that we should divide it into five and each member of the family paint a section. That is the result in the picture there. We used it like that for years and it now hangs on the outside of the shop facing the deck. The family that created it has long since disappeared evolving into a new family with other priorities than those outlined on the table, and I do miss them, but not as much as I value who they have become. The elements are cracking the paint and the images get a little lighter every year but I am able to look at it regularly. One of these days it will be just a gouged up table top again and I will discard it and make way for new experiences and memories. We all keep our photos, our bits of paper, our writings, but most of the experiences of this life can only be archived for a very short time. Even our memory changes so what we think we have stored away is merely fantasy layered over our faulty perception of so called reality. Not much to cling to. As it should be, I say. We should no more hold to and hoard memories than we should old table tops. We can and should use them only as a catalyst for new experiences. We should break them out to freshen bonds that threaten to fray, to laugh and create new experiences, new memories while doing so. I don't know what this has to do with the toy store. It's just what was on my mind this morning as I sat on the deck, drinking coffee, looking at the table top, and that old rocker that Genna and I painted when I chose to bring my son home from the hospital rather than give him up for adoption (now there is a story worthy of a blog, but again having nothing to do with running a toy store.) Change can happen so fast these days. Especially with a house full of teenagers. For me it is somehow comforting to watch my world changing one flake of paint at a time.