Saying Goodbye to Childhood Mementos

I keep telling myself...it is just a bowl. But here I am with tears running down my face after discovering the huge crack on the bowl's side as I fished it from the bottom of the sink overflowing of dirty dishes.

It is just a bowl. A physical object that just so happens to hold a lot of memories. I'm not the type of person that holds on to a lot of items. I love to purge, clearing out the closets and attic several times a year. Each of my children has one small box of mementos from birth, that I continue to add to periodically. I live by a strict rule: if you don't use it/play with it, it goes out of the house. This mindset has enabled me to live in small spaces, to travel lightly and move from place to place with ease. It has also encouraged me to surround myself with the things I really love and care about. There is no question about what I hold sacred in my life.

It is just a bowl.

This bowl is from my childhood. A small plastic bowl with Mickey Mouse's face on the bottom. My sister and I would fight over who would get to eat breakfast cereal out of it, in our childhood minds it was comforting to see his face smiling at you at the start of each day. I don't know how I was lucky enough to be the one to leave my parent's house with it but I've carried this bowl with me throughout college, five years in New York, cross country to Seattle and back again to Maryland. It's made it through several cut throat purge sessions and reorganizing.

It is just a bowl.

Now my children have been using it. My youngest son uses it each night for his before bedtime snack when he claims he's starving. I don't know if he'll notice that it's gone, if he has fond memories of it yet. Maybe when he's older and sees it on a shelf of an antique store, he'll smile to himself and insist on buying it because it is more than just a bowl. It is a memory. It is comfort. It is home.
I'm going to miss you Mickey.