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Not the coffee table!

 I have moved so many times there are few things to which I  am attached.  What with burglaries, 'lost at sea', and downsizing, upsizing and downsizing again, most of my original belongings have long disappeared.  Despite all this I have clung on to photographs, some in albums so heavy I can hardly lift them, but in this age of digital everything it is important to me to keep hold of them.  How many billions of digital pictures lay forgotten on old laptops and phones?  Does anyone look at them once they have been posted on social media?  Probably never so I shall keep lugging them round the world with me and when I die the children can get rid of them if they so wish -if they dare!  I am definitely up for a bit of haunting from my afterlife.

So that, a few family mementoes and my published works are what are important for me to keep.  However, when it comes to my children and grandchildren their priorities take a different course. I am moving again and clearing  out.  The five year old, of course, wants the Lego and cars, one son wants the spice rack,  while another wants the le creuset, the karscher and the hand made place mats from Yugoslavia.

I was talking to a grown  up grandson in Australia and said I was moving into a small apartment so was getting rid of furniture.  'You're not selling the coffee table are you?' he exclaimed.  'Well it is very large,' I replied.  'But we used to hide under it, I hid under it when I broke your window.'  Obviously a major memory for him but one that has not been logged in my brain.  'You can't get rid of the coffee table,' he continued.  He lives in Australia, I am lucky if I see him every five years so why should it bother me that I am about to get rid of a childhood memory?  I spoke to my son and relayed this conversation to him.  'Well I remember when we moved from New York you said I couldn't take all my comics with me and I have never forgiven you for that.'  He was 8 years old, which means he has carried that grudge around for 43 years!  I called another grandson, 'Oh yeah you can't get rid of the coffee table.'  It's a coffee table for heaven's sake, not some family heirloom.  But 43 years is a long time to bear a grudge and I don't want recriminations passed from son to grandson so hook or by crook I will find room for the coffee table.

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