Theatrical Muse: Throw Away
What do you still have from when you were young?
There aren’t many things Murphy kept from her childhood. When she was sixteen, in a fit of teenage angst and a little under-aged drinking, she gave most of her stuffed animals and old clothes to the Salvation Army. They were very grateful and she was pretty bitter. She kept one shoebox of things, though, filled with the things she just couldn’t part with no matter how angry or angst-y she got. The shoebox mostly sits on a shelf in her closet where it gathers dust. She rarely dealt with it, sometimes she even forgot about it until it caught her eye and she remembered.
Inside there’s one picture of her and her mother taken by her father on one of the few family outings they had. She’s ten-years-old, sitting in her mother’s lap on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. She looks like a happy, normal kid in that picture with a happy loving family. It’s one of the few fond memories she has before her mother left and her parents divorced, but looking at it reminds her of everything she lost so it stays in the box.
There’s a little stuffed tiger, just a bit bigger than her hand now, from the Lincoln Park Zoo. That had been a gift from her grandmother. The zoo itself was free admission, but that made the food and all the stuff in the gift shop really expensive. Her grandmother had been a penny pincher, so the small tiger was actually a big purchase even though it was only seven dollars. Her grandmother had gotten it because her dad had missed her birthday, again, for a case. She kept it because she loved her grandmother fiercely.
Her baby booties were in that box along with the knitted pink cap the hospital had plopped on her head shortly after she was born. Her mother had left both behind when she left for unknown reasons. Murphy kept them for the same unknown. Maybe they were a reminder of how she’d come into the world, a tiny, little innocent thing. She knew now she could never be that way again.
There’s a cheap plastic ring a boy in third grade had given her, a friendship bracelet her best friend in fourth grade had made her and her first diary from when she was thirteen. It wasn’t a very happy diary, filled with brand new teenage angst and terrible, God awful poetry.
They were the things from her childhood she couldn’t part with, the things she couldn’t let slip away from her even now that she was nearing forty. They might have just been gathering dust but it didn’t mean they had stopped being important to her. She didn’t think they ever would because her childhood made her, those things made her and she wasn’t in to throwing herself away.
There aren’t many things Murphy kept from her childhood. When she was sixteen, in a fit of teenage angst and a little under-aged drinking, she gave most of her stuffed animals and old clothes to the Salvation Army. They were very grateful and she was pretty bitter. She kept one shoebox of things, though, filled with the things she just couldn’t part with no matter how angry or angst-y she got. The shoebox mostly sits on a shelf in her closet where it gathers dust. She rarely dealt with it, sometimes she even forgot about it until it caught her eye and she remembered.
Inside there’s one picture of her and her mother taken by her father on one of the few family outings they had. She’s ten-years-old, sitting in her mother’s lap on the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier. She looks like a happy, normal kid in that picture with a happy loving family. It’s one of the few fond memories she has before her mother left and her parents divorced, but looking at it reminds her of everything she lost so it stays in the box.
There’s a little stuffed tiger, just a bit bigger than her hand now, from the Lincoln Park Zoo. That had been a gift from her grandmother. The zoo itself was free admission, but that made the food and all the stuff in the gift shop really expensive. Her grandmother had been a penny pincher, so the small tiger was actually a big purchase even though it was only seven dollars. Her grandmother had gotten it because her dad had missed her birthday, again, for a case. She kept it because she loved her grandmother fiercely.
Her baby booties were in that box along with the knitted pink cap the hospital had plopped on her head shortly after she was born. Her mother had left both behind when she left for unknown reasons. Murphy kept them for the same unknown. Maybe they were a reminder of how she’d come into the world, a tiny, little innocent thing. She knew now she could never be that way again.
There’s a cheap plastic ring a boy in third grade had given her, a friendship bracelet her best friend in fourth grade had made her and her first diary from when she was thirteen. It wasn’t a very happy diary, filled with brand new teenage angst and terrible, God awful poetry.
They were the things from her childhood she couldn’t part with, the things she couldn’t let slip away from her even now that she was nearing forty. They might have just been gathering dust but it didn’t mean they had stopped being important to her. She didn’t think they ever would because her childhood made her, those things made her and she wasn’t in to throwing herself away.