The Things He Actually Reaches For

We have a room with a shelf. The shelf has things on it that I would describe, honestly, as a mixed bag: some chosen carefully, some bought impulsively, some gifted by well-meaning relatives, some found on the floor of a craft store on a Tuesday. He does not care about these categories. He has his own system, entirely opaque to me, that determines what gets reached for.

The things he reaches for: a set of coloured pencils kept in a tin, which he uses every single day. A small wooden horse someone gave us at a wedding four years ago. Three books — the same three, rotated in some private sequence, read until we can both recite them without looking. A length of rope he found in the garage. A notebook that was originally mine, which he has taken over completely without asking.

The things that do not get reached for: a beautifully illustrated science kit that cost more than I'd like to admit. A set of magnetic tiles that comes with a hundred pieces and instructions in four languages. A puzzle rated for his age that he completed once, returned to the shelf, and has not touched since. Most of his birthday presents from last year.

What the reached-for things have in common is that they don't arrive with instructions about what they're supposed to be. The pencils are just pencils. The rope is just a rope. The notebook has blank pages. He has to decide what they're for each time, and the answer is different each time. The things that gather dust all came with a predetermined idea of what a child should do with them.

I am not drawing the obvious conclusion — that expensive is bad, simple is good, less is more. He loves some elaborate things. He ignores some simple ones. The variable is not complexity or cost. It's whether the thing waits for him to arrive at it, or whether it arrives at him with its purpose already decided. He tends to find his way to the ones that are patient.