TOYS IN THE ATTIC

Whenever our children, now 32, 30, and 26, outgrew something, my mother would matter-of-factly say, “Okay, you’ll put it in the attic.” It made no matter whether clothes, shoes, ice skates, a toy, puzzles, or some papers/projects from school, up they went. Children’s books are still in almost every room of our house, including the playroom on the third floor.

After following my mother’s advice, today, our attic, actually a third floor, is crowded with all kinds of keepsakes. Now, I’m playing the sorting game, and it is downright fun. Our three are not apt to be running for President, so maybe we didn’t need to keep every paper they ever wrote or projects they made, but I’m glad we kept those reusable toys. We even saved a green and blue brand-named toy box to store some of the smaller toys.

One look at all the new toys and games our infant grandchildren are gathering at their house brings back the memories of not so long ago. As I retrieve each toy from our third-floor playroom to scrub down, I anticipate the joy it will bring the babies. I also recall the friends and relatives who gifted our children many of the things, just waiting at our house to be explored by our children’s children. There are even a few hand-me-down toys from relatives and children of friends, which came with entertaining and memorable stories.

Along with buckets of various sized balls, there are stashes of Power Rangers figures. There is even a farm that their daddy, at all of four-years-old, just had to have. Ah, the farm. I’ll never forget the exasperated call from my brother Al. Having seen the commercial for the toy farm numerous times, we thought it was an easy find. We asked my brother to pick it up at Bradlees, the sight of the old popular Two Guys discount store in Union, New Jersey, where the varieties of farms to choose from ended up making it a nerve-racking task.

While washing the tea set my daughter played with, I thought about when I heard her tell her baby niece, “Whatever is mine, is yours.” Now, we can have a tea party as I recite, “I’m a little teapot,” and my granddaughter giggles. We’ll invite her aunt to join us from Los Angeles, on the Portal, by Facebook. What a party it will be! We can take out the dolls stuffed inside the sizable doll container pictured below and dress them up for the celebration.

Puzzles remind me the most of our younger son. When he was in preschool, the teacher told us that she would wait for him to help put all the puzzles together so that she could store them. If he was absent a day, she opined how much she missed him being in class to put the puzzles together. It will be exciting to watch him work on puzzles with his niece and nephew and see what other old-time favorites he helps them discover from our menagerie.

With praise to our three cuties for keeping their toys in tiptop condition, there remains a variety for all age ranges to choose from and explore. I get a kick out of the storylines in some of the books, especially seeing things that we will need to explain, such as landline telephones and clotheslines with clothes hung by clothespins.

Ma, thanks, this is so much fun. Now we are not as conflicted about not going into stores to buy things during the pandemic, and we’re free from any hassle of making purchases online and waiting for delivery. In addition to saving money, at the same time, we are entertaining our baby grandchildren with a large inventory of inherited toys. 

This year for Hanukkah, for our two grandchildren, both under two years of age, we can get away with wrapping gifts pulled straight from our third-floor (well, one, two, or maybe three purchases online can be in the mix). We can supplement that by giving them gelt (money) for their college fund. I know how happy this would make you, Tottoo (Tottoo is the name our eldest son coined for my mother. That was because she called him tatelah, Yiddish for little man); these are the children of your firstborn tateleh who play with the toys you wisely directed us to “put in the attic.”

Solly playing with one of the puzzles we had stored on the third floor

Solly watching Dizzy pose for grandma in front of the blocks we gave his daddy for Chanukah when he was Solly’s age now. The box says “Happy Chanukah 1989 Judd Eban Cohen Love, Mommy and Daddy”