Nobody Wants My Stuff

A Lenten Lament of Memory and Hope

I am at the time in my life when I notice how much I have, and wonder what will become of it when I am no longer here. Truthfully, this isn’t the first time I have looked around and thought about all of the “things” that I have — this has come up at other times in my life as well. When I graduated from college, when I moved to Japan (and again, when I moved home), when I got married, and when I moved to Texas — at all of those times I looked around and noticed — an abundance of “things”. An excess of things. The weight of things. Things that I didn’t care about, although maybe I did, once. Things that I was, or am, attached to, for good reasons or not-so-good reasons.

It’s different now, though, at least in some ways. I still have the issue of excess, but now I am also looking around at objects that surround me, and that have value to me, and realizing (sometimes painfully) that they really don’t have meaning to anyone else.

I have this weird handmade cloth clown doll. I have had it since I was a baby. It is a miracle to me that it survived this long. I don’t remember ever playing with it, although it sat on a shelf in my bedroom. It’s just been around, my whole life. My mother told me that one of my father’s customers made this clown doll for me. My dad owned a TV Sales and Repair business when I was little. I never knew who the customer was, so there’s really no connection to me. But I have kept it all these years, and I thought I would like to pass it along to someone in my family.

Not surprisingly, no one wants it.

This makes sense, although I confess that I did imagine (at first) that someone might want it.

It’s hard to explain even to myself why I have kept it all these years. I don’t have any of my other old toys. Wait, I do have a Chatty Cathy doll and a few clothes, although I’m not expecting anyone to be interested in her either (even though she still has pajamas and matching slippers). I have the Bible my grandparents gave me when I was just learning to read. And I have a Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook, a gift from my godparents when I was about 9 years old. Why did I keep it? I don’t know.

Except that I do. The clown doll reminds me that even though I am now old, that once I was a baby. It reminds me of my father, and a time when my father sold and repaired TVs for a living. It reminds me of a time when TVs were not flat, but had picture tubes. You could not hang them on your wall. It reminds me of my father’s shop, on 17th and Lake Street in the heart of Minneapolis, an area where Swedish immigrants settled. I can barely remember what the shop looked like now, but I have a vague memory of the Philco television sets displayed in the window, of the small outer room where people came to shop and the back room where my father fixed their TVs. I remember his orange and white van with the words “G & B TV” emblazoned on the side. I remember riding down Lake Street to go to his shop, passing the Lincoln Delicatessen, Lake Calhoun (now known by its native name, Bde Maka Ska, ), past the large Sears building with its Art Deco Architecture, Grossman Chevrolet, and many other businesses. I remember that his shop was near a cemetery, and there was a Phillips 66 gas station nearby. Also, there was Ingebretsens Scandinavian Food and gifts. Of course.

When I see this silly little clown doll, I think of my dad, wearing his gray shirt and gray pants, in an era when people bought TVs and had them repaired, instead of throwing them away and getting new ones. I think of the fact that my dad was a small business owner who knew his customers, that his business was not just a business but a set of relationships in a neighborhood, that he was a part of a community. When I am tempted to romanticize this, I also remember that later on someone broke into his shop at least twice during the night, and that once he was held up at gunpoint. (He didn’t have much cash; they stole his watch). When I was in junior high, his business failed, and he worked for Penneys and later Daytons, simply selling, no longer repairing.

It’s not the clown doll, not really. There’s nothing memorable about the clown doll, except that it, somehow, still survives. It’s there, reminding me of relationships, both the lasting ones and the transitory ones. The relationship between my dad and a customer. The relationship between my dad and me.

Nobody wants my stuff. For one thing, it doesn’t have meaning for anyone else like it does for me. For another, we all have too much stuff. (That’s a Lenten confession right there). Perhaps it is the same with memories. There are so many of them, some sharp as yesterday, and others hazy as if they were two centuries ago. Some memories we hold close, and others we push away.

I never played with the clown doll when I was little, but as an adult, and a pastor, I used to bring it to confirmation classes, where I asked my small group to give it a name. (One year, they named it “Dewey”, I know not why.) We would pass Dewey around the group while we told each other our highs and lows.

It is Lent, and I’m thinking about all of the stuff, and the many kinds of value it has. I’m thinking about Lent, and what we hold on to, and what we let go of, and why. Does a handmade clown doll have value in the Kingdom of God? How about the Betty Crocker Boys and Girls Cookbook that your godparents gave you in 1967? Or a picture of your dad, smiling down into your crib when you were a baby, one curl hanging down his forehead, and a look of pure joy on his face?

It is Lent, and what do I have to give away? I want to give things away. Not the things that no one wants. But something of value. Something that you can’t hold, but that holds you. The smile on my dad’s face.

Maybe what I really want is for them to have their own memories — their own faith and hope. Maybe what I really want is for someone to look at them the way my dad looked at me when I was a baby. And for them to know that is the love of God.