Significant Objects

I came home one night to an empty desk and my heart sank. Only now do I realize that ‘significant objects’ seems like an odd pairing, almost and oxymoron. Sometimes you might think an object is significant until all of a sudden it’s gone and you’re left with only the memory of it. The memory of the computer taken from your room two weeks ago by someone you’ve never met. Someone with no concern for the fact that the item they stole held many of these supposed ‘significant objects’. Someone who will never know that their selfish and juvenile act may in fact turn out to be a gift to their victim, whose eyes were opened to the world upon discovering her possession was missing.

Two weeks ago I would have addressed this question with an irritating confidence and declared that a museum holding my most significant objects would contain my photographs. I get so easily attached to people, places and times that I know will eventually slip through my hands that I inherently bring my camera everywhere, imprisoning every expression and scene in the small, silver holding cell. After obsessively organizing my memories onto my laptop I spend hours deciding which ones to frame and which ones to safely store in my computer for future nostalgic reminiscing.

Then one night, four years of people, places and times were stolen. Four thousand expressions and scenes were whisked away from my dark, empty house. My personal museum taken right out from underneath me. The computer, replaceable… its contents of significant objects- lost forever.

Between trips to the police station and trying to forge through my fourth year of University lacking the papers and assignments also lost, there have been times when I found myself in a daze, sitting on my bed staring at walls covered with those images printed before the robbery. A sunny day, sitting on hay bales with my sister in the field by our cottage. Laughing, icing-covered faces of my childhood friends after a spontaneous cake fight. Classmates graduated and moved on, suddenly older and wiser than in the images before me. Roommates who I can hear stirring through the thin walls of our nineteenth century house.

Then it finally dawns on me. Objects aren’t significant. The images of friends and family on my computer and my walls aren’t significant. These people are significant. The times I spent with these people are significant. The relationships I have with these people are significant. A picture on my computer doesn’t hug back and I can’t confide in a matte or glossy print. I didn’t lose any of these people when I lost the pictures of them.

So I present to you my museum, an empty room. Filled with nothing, because no object I own is significant enough to put on display. No material thing in my possession is significant enough to show what really matters: the people I love, and the memories of them, safely stored in my head.