However Can I Let Go of This Coffee Mug?

Goodbye, Willow's Mug

Was there ever a more delightful coffee mug? Jason bought this, along with several others, maybe 10 or 12 years ago. It's some mass-produced thing that has wormed its way into my heart because in recent years, my daughter has proclaimed her love for it. When she comes home to visit, this is "her mug" that I proudly serve her coffee in. When I hand her this mug, I think these thoughts go through my head: During this, your visit home to us, I remembered your mug. I wonder, do you notice that I remembered your mug? Do you know how much I love you as I hand you this mug with coffee I brewed you with such tenderness of heart?

Willow's Cherished Coffee Mug

I believe she notices and that our bonds silently grow stronger as a mother and a daughter relating to one another.  

This morning, Jason noticed the chip in the mug, and he asked if we could let go of it. I asked him if he thought the chip made it dangerous. He said yes, potentially. I stubbornly retorted, You can throw it out only if you can locate its sibling (it has a tan-based and maybe a blue-based sibling somewhere).  Determined to make headway on the clutter, he went downstairs to the storage room, which contains one or more boxes of "overflow coffee mugs" to locate its sibling. But to no avail.  

However, in those minutes he rummaged, I allowed the idea of letting go, of Thneedletting, to take hold, and I saw the reason of his proposal. I thought, I will make the darn blog (yes, it's a delay to just tossing stuff), and this will be one of the first posts. When Willow laments the absence of this mug, I can soothe her with this post and all the warm and happy memories of waking up in her latter-day-childhood bedroom with this mug in her hand as she sits in bed relaxing with Wally. And I shall let this go.  

Today is Trash-ex, the Great Celebration*, and the mug is already at the curb as I write this. Perhaps we should have repaired the mug, you might counter. That's what my grandparents may have done in the spirit of their Depression-era childhoods. Perhaps they would have applied some sort of benign epoxy to stave off further degradation, to prevent chipping of the cup and swallowing of chips. Perhaps I will reach that level of development as I progress in my journey. However, today, the win is in the removal of the mug.  

Trash-ex, The Great Celebration

Trash-ex, the Great Celebration, is exactly what it sounds like.  The night before trash day, a member of the family rolls the trash bins to the curb.  The next day, the city's noble trash collectors haul off the trash by dumping the bins into the giant maw of their trash collection truck. The performance of Trash-ex duties is not particularly cherished, if I am honest, and so, by talking it up as a day of celebration and a special day and a special duty, our family tries to motivate ourselves to engage in taking the trash out.

A Piggy-backing Thneedletting, Interrupted

By the way, I found another cherished-but-handle-less coffee mug in the storage room. This mug came from Carrollton's Mecca Fest, circa 2008. I thought I'll have a double-win this day. I took this visaged mug outside for its photoshoot (thinking in my head, will Willow be disappointed this mug has been discarded? and remembering how my father would laugh deeply when, during this mug's heyday, when it had a handle and still was on the active shelf for drinkers of coffee, he saw this mug), and I handed it to Jason in the kitchen for his final goodbye. He turned it over in his hands, and he shook his head with a somewhat rueful look. He agreed it needed to go, but then his body walked across the kitchen to the counter where he emptied a plastic cup full of writing utensils, and he put the utensils in the mug! In that moment, he renewed the purpose of the handle-less mug. The plastic cup (previously holding the utensils) will go in the dishwasher and return to normal circulation. 

Isn't this the best mug ever?

Ron from Duluth(?) Made It

Thneedletting, Interrupted

What is the meaning of this mug to us humans? 

I think it means these things:

When we first moved to Carrollton, we felt like strangers in a strange Southeastern land. We were Texpat 20- and 30-somethings at the start of our careers and family-building. We had moved to a small town in Georgia with what we perceived to be a tight-knit, insular, conservative community. They likely distrust us, we felt. We don't look right. We are people who go to the local art festival on a Sunday morn and buy artistic and/or crafty things from outsiders who make. Of course, we don't buy the expensive things, because we don't have the money for that...with three kids and educator salaries. But we can wander around the art festival with our kids and let them burn off energy interacting with the event (laughing at the living statue artist and eating ice cream) and support the event by buying some small things like this mug from Ron from Duluth (a talented guy with a unique vision and an entrepreneurial spirit, to boot!), and, over time, as we have aged alongside this mug, it has burnt itself deep into our collective hearts and characters. Heck, even my father has loved it and reinforced its connectedness and belongingness in our web.

In writing the above, I cringe a little, but I am trying to express the feelings (and the stories) that are maybe attached to our things. These stories may be the obstacles to letting things go. We still have this thing, but maybe some day, we can let it go. 

I bet it means something different to Jason and the others of the house.