the box of toys lost to time

So, I guess it was three years ago I got my framer to make a real big box so I could dump in it many of the toys from my boys early childhood.

I though it would make a good composition with bright colors, its strong forms, and objects each of which demand unique attention.  I also thought that over the years rubber would bend plastic would stress and shatter and that finally there would be left only shards and tangled remains.

My boys got a kick out of it...they sat in front of it for about an hour, each of them pointing to certain figures, and telling each other how they played with it, which toy was the one they wanted in the bathtub, which one was the one they had in the bottom of the bed, how one was lost for so long but finally turned up in a crease in the couch.

They remembered the old movies they saw, and they remembered the time surrounding many of the toys, they recalled which ones had been outside with them, which ones had consequently been lost for periods of time, what house we were in when these events occurred, which friends had been over...

And now they all rest in this pauper's grave and I am reminded of a story cousin Edith told.  How, when my father's mother died when he was five...how when he grew up he learned that she was buried in a pauper's grave, how this appalled him and he determined to have her dug up and buried properly...but gave up when the man explained to him how many people were buried together in those graves...

He was determined not to be buried at all...and when he died his ashes were spread across the island where he lived...

...and now when I look at these figurines, all buried together,  I feel the sadness that comes from growing up, not losing your affection for childhood toys, but feeling the interests of new feelings and thoughts that have taken their place...and the sadness of the ruptured toys, lost forever in time, forever collapsing, sinking, crushed together under time's endless mass...