“Found this sticky gunk under a shelf inside my house. Not a lot of signs of animal activity but there is a small hole in the corner of the room with a little bit of brick powder on the floor. What is this thing?”

The Wave

Disgust gave way to tenderness. That gritty blob didn’t just smell of dust—it carried the scent of Saturday mornings: cartoons blaring, glitter glue drying, Gak making its signature pffft noise. No phones. No deadlines. Just bare feet on cool linoleum and the sacred freedom of making something pointless with your hands.

 

My son will never know the joy of pressing Floam into baseboards just to watch his mom sigh. He’ll never feel the triumph of a perfectly molded dinosaur saddle. And that’s okay. But holding that crumbly artifact, I felt a bridge stretch across decades—a thread connecting the child I was to the parent I am.

 

The Letting Go

Did I keep it? No.

 

I held it for exactly 63 seconds—long enough to show my partner, who asked, “You’re not putting that in a shadowbox, are you?” (I wasn’t. Probably.) Then into the trash it went. Some memories don’t need physical anchors.

CONTINUE READING IN THE NEXT PAGE