An object is just a thing -- until animated by its owner. What story do the things around you tell?

Just four of my recently purchased gold-rimmed "things" that,
to my eye, are lovely. I wonder what their story is...

We are in the season of many things. Some things are wrapped up and exchanged as gifts. Some things are welcome, come with a story, and are cherished. Other things...well, not so much. 

We are in the season of many things, so I have been thinking about things... Inanimate objects. Maybe a hair ribbon, a hubcap, a diary, or a notebook. Each inanimate, until we do something with it — the hair ribbon that holds together the silky golden hair of the first grader; a diary filled with appointments and names and to do lists. A notebook with scraps of writing that amount to something, maybe. A hubcap that protects the lug bolts on the wheel until the car hits a rut and the hubcap bounces off — left to rust in the ditch. Then, if you’re in a crime story, that hub cap holds the key to the murder case because it pinpoints the location of the one crucial detail that turns the case.

But no thing — ordinary or not — is ever just a thing. It is a something with the potential to change the course of a story.

An image of clothespins was a recent 'spark'
in a writing group, which inspired this piece. 

Consider the humble clothespin. Designed and manufactured to hold clothes on a line. But, when my grandmother was a little girl, she used such an old-fashioned wooden clothes pin as a beauty aid — she saw herself as less beautiful than her sisters and so put the pin on her nose in an effort, probably painful, to make it more dainty, more shapely.

No thing is ever just what it seems.

I am bingeing my way through the British crime drama UNFORGOTTEN, an excellent series that makes plain the idea that no single thing is ever only what it appears. A scrap of clothing is not waste: its weave holds the blood of the murderer. A diary is not an innocent listing of events, it contains vital information about where the suspect met the victim, even if written in code with only the initials. I am startled time and again by the tedious, painstaking long-hours work the detectives undertake to unearth the tiny piece of the story that the oddest, and the most ordinary, things can hold.

After my mother died, I was in charge of clearing out her apartment suite. I woke up early the day I began the task. I had lain in bed wondering where to start and, eventually, decided the best place would be the hardest place: her closet. All her clothes that she had worn when alive. She had plenty, though no one could accuse her of being a follower of the latest fashions. Plain, ordinary, comfortable clothes held space in the closet. And when I went into the bedroom to deal with them I realized that they were, in fact, just that: just clothes. Without my mother to animate them, they were wholly empty, void of meaning. My mother would never again wear them, would never bring them alive, so all those clothes were, in fact, just things. Though, for me, because I knew her and had seen her in those clothes, they told the story of the woman who wore them: sensible, unadorned, ordinary — on the outside. If I weren’t here to tell it, it would take a detective to unearth the story of the woman, very much extraordinary, who inhabited them. The homemade kaftan, of cotton possibly brought back from Africa by my father, that Mum wore with pearls as her going-out outfit for many years. Stylish? Well, her style, not anyone else’s. A good detective could pull that story together.

I packed up most everything into those ubiquitous black garbage bags and a lovely neighbour carted them off to the local charity shops where, I fantasize, someone found that kaftan and loved the green, white and black pattern that they have now transformed into, let’s say, placemats; or maybe found that threadbare waistcoat and marvelled at the fabric that they have now incorporated into a piece of art on their wall.

No thing is ever just what it seems. Ordinary or not, once animated by a human, that thing becomes exceptional in the moment, and over the longer term in the story of that person and their life.

My current delight is trolling through the shelves of local Goodwill stores, my eyes ever open for small bowls and dishes — my weakness. I want old, I want a bit of gold rim, I want small and pretty, I want made in England or maybe Germany or Poland. I’m up to about ten or so, now sitting on my table downstairs. I just like having them, looking at them and wondering what their story is. The sweet little dish, gold rimmed, to mark Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation. Who bought it originally? Who packed it up to donate to Goodwill? What did they think as they did so? What is its story? I shall never know, and that is part of its charm for me.

Designed. Made. Bought. Enjoyed. Packed up. Passed along. Found. A new home. A new life for that thing. A new story unfolding…

Things are all around me. Ordinary things, lovely things, important things, useless things. It is I who give them meaning. Without me, that meaning is gone, lost, less. The clothespin holds clothes and who would ever know it could be used as a beauty aid unless I told that story about my grandmother…

Stories are things, too. Made up of words — inanimate, surely, on the page, until the writer and the reader, together, share the story of the meaning they create.

Words. 

Things.

Every thing, somewhere along the line of its existence, has been touched by a human. Whether the resulting story resonates deeply with anyone is up to chance as much as anything. Two plus two is often, usually, four, but, sometimes, if the story maker has a really good imagination, two plus two can end up being so much more. And that is the glory and the wonder of ordinary things, held by humans and animated by their living.

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Land acknowledgement: I respectfully recognize that I live on the original lands of Anishinaabe, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota and Dene peoples, and on the homeland of the Métis Nation.

Photo of clothespins on a line by Kyle Arcilla on Unsplash