A Teddy Bear Lamp, a Clock, and a Patchwork Blanket—

Our Most Loved Possessions Remember Who We Are

As a child, I remember how exciting it felt to go out at night—to a diner or a drive-in movie.

To leave home, if only for a few hours, felt like an escape, a release. But after the excitement of the outing was over, there was the ride home, in the family car, a blue and silver Ford. My father at the driver’s wheel, we’d nose through the dark, the radio bleating softly.

I remember how strange that feeling was—of being in between places.

Sometimes, I’d count street lamps, like beads on a rosary. Each time we passed one, and light fell in through the window, my face would appear in the glass, a pale moon floating in the dark. Then the night would ripple over—until my face reappeared when the next lamp came into view.

It was a peculiar feeling to catch one’s face—swimming in the dark. And stranger still to contemplate my face as existing apart from me. I’d feel in such moments, the strangeness of being in a body with a face—my face.

Why was my face—my face? In such moments identity seemed so tenuous, unreal.

And then we’d arrive at edge of the neighborhood I recognized as my neighborhood—the banyan tree, the soccer field, storm drain culvert and ditch. Even the patch of wild guinea grass at the edge of the field was a sign.

And then, the turn up the street leading to the asphalt driveway, the green manual lift-door to the garage.

Last, I’d reach my hand into my room, feeling the inside of the wall for the light switch, and step in.

The teddybear lamp, the white clock, the patchwork blanket folded at the foot of my bed seemed to remember me as much as I remembered them. Objects that reconstituted the tenuous self that had begun to break apart and dissolve in the strangeness of the world, like a wafer dipped in a glass of milk.

These objects weren’t just the reminders of who I was but existential glue that kept me together. They remembered me.

I’d glance at the clock—its second had sweeping around the the numbered disc, turn off the lamp, pull up the patchwork blanket over me, relish the coolness of its touch when it first brushed my skin.

And nestle into sleep, the self I knew as myself recollected and secure, anchored for the night.