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Generation X — A Reckoning
Your Kids Don’t Want Your Sticker Collection or Old Mix Tapes
How do I know? You don’t want your parents’ stuff either
No one wants your stuff.
Your daughter isn’t re-wearing your wedding dress. Junior doesn’t want your collection of antique fishing lures. Your kids love you, not your shrunken head collection from your stint in the Peace Corps.
Tough Love
I’ve been thinking lately about the artifacts one collects over a lifetime. Maybe it’s because I’m middle-aged. Or because I’ve been fortunate to have accumulated so much junk. Maybe it’s because one day I’ll determine the fate of my parents’ hideous “expressionist” art and puke green Corelle dishes.
But most likely it’s because my teenage daughter doesn’t vibe with my obsessive attachment to Swatch watches, Hello Kitty erasers, or orange glass vases from the 1930s.
Memento Mori
I don’t dwell on the melancholic garage sale I’ll one day plan for my parents, or the one my daughter will (hopefully on a different day) plan for me.
In the midst of buying more stuff from Instagram ads, I read Ann Patchett’s article in The New Yorker about how the death of the…
