The Thing About Stuff

We had a tea party in the tub today, bubbles and all. We had a little table upon which Sam poured out from his pink plastic Beauty and the Beast teapot and we pretended to eat plastic cookies.

"This is a lovely tea party, Clarabelle," I said. "Thank you for inviting me."

"You're welcome, Goofy," says Clarabelle, "I'm glad you're here." And Clarabelle the Cow (who appears regularly on the Micky Mouse Clubhouse, where we got this grand idea to have a tea party in a bubble bath) hands me a little pink cup of tepid water and insists that I actually drink it. So I do.

The thing about cheap plastic toys and unlimited TV and reveling in all the other insane riches this consumer culture has to offer is this: This moment is lovely, and it has made our day--so much so that we do it twice. That we could probably have accomplished similar results without the cheap plastic table, chairs and teaset is true, but that little teapot fit perfectly in Sam's hand and he poured easily into the little cups. He so thoroughly enjoyed himself that I can no longer find it in me to believe that we should feel bad about this.

We have stuff, lots of stuff. We bought it all secondhand and paid next to nothing for it, but it's mostly crazy not very functional junk and there is a lot of it, so much that sometimes we trip over it--especially my one legged husband who has to be very careful moving around at night when he can't see what all might be lying in his path (so distressing to take a step in the dark and land upon plastic hippo that says 'Wow, I'm very hippo stream', whatever the hell that means).

And sometimes the stuff makes me crazy and threatens to take over our home and I wonder if I'm making a horrible mistake and leading my son down that road--you know that road, the one that leads to hell and is paved with good intentions...

But when my son turns to me and says, 'I wish I had wings so I could fly', I rummage in the closet and come out with a pair of nylon butterfly wings just his size and we go out into the wind and he flies. And when he says 'I wish I had a hat like the Masked Retriever', I rummage through our hat collection and our dressup box and outfit him in perfect style. And when he wants to build a house for even the tallest of his dinosaurs, we have enough megablocks to do it.

I know that many people believe it's good for a child not to always get what he wants, and Sam doesn't. It does happen now and then that I just don't have or can't make the props for what he wants to do and he is totally OK with that. Because the stuff isn't the central focus of our lives, it's what the stuff helps us achieve.

A good friend of mine, who has always been very minimalist in terms of spending and acquiring, told me not too long ago that she had realized it wasn't such a bad thing to have money, to save money. Money, she essentially said, empowers us to get where we want to go. But stuff, she remains convinced, is very Bad.

Me, I don't see the difference. These things, money, toys, butterfly wings, are all a means to an end. Acquiring, having, using these things doesn't in itself create a need for more things or perpetuate the cycle of self medication through consumption. What creates the need for more things is the feeling of lack, the feeling of emptiness resulting from chronic emotional and/or material deprivation.

The trinkets and treasures we drag home from town are not the end of our story as consumers. We build worlds with them, create stories, learn about how things work, live vicariously, live large, revel in the feeling of endless possiblity. There is nothing we can not do! But it is not the stuff that gives us this feeling. The stuff supports us in the things we want to accomplish, and having it at hand frees us to broaden the scope of what we can do. Having experienced that kind of freedom to create, to be, to live, to learn, to build, to grow, nurtures a sense of confidence rather than a feeling of need.

And when my son told me that he wished he were a fairy like Tinkerbell, it just so happened that I had a sparkly Tinkerbell costume set aside for just such a possibility. And out into the desert he went, with his magic fairy wand that makes a sparkly sound when you push the pink plastic button, and his green winged fairy dress. And for him it was a real experience of fairyhood. He could have done it without the dress, and even without the wand--but why? Why not live in a world full of sparkle and wonder and possibility?

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Other Things We Did Today

Threw stuffed animals at each other (we have at on of these, too, for just this purpose--very helpful for releasing feelings of aggression and restlessness).

Threw rocks in the desert. Climbed hills and slid down them.

Read books.

Made a pizza!!

Watched Micky Mouse Clubhouse.

Played kickball in the kitchen.

Cleaned house with Theresa in the morning, messed it up again in the afternoon.