Five Things You’d Save in a Fire / Take to a Deserted Island

We just celebrated Thanksgiving in America, and I struggled a bit with my thankfulness this year. I won’t go into the details, but sometimes the ebbs and flows of life can take you to a place where the things you know you should be grateful for are suddenly hiding behind a very cranky mood and a pile of unresolved feelings.

Wants vs. Needs

I recently got together with some friends I taught first grade with back in the 1980s. We’ve stayed close all these decades. We reminisced about a lesson we created together about wants versus needs. I was trying to teach my littles – five- and six-year-olds – what human beings truly need: clean air to breathe, food to eat, a safe place to sleep, and, of course, clean water. Even that discussion gave me pause, because some of those children may not have had all the things I assumed they did.

Then those same littles announced that something everyone needs is love. Without love, what’s the point of living? In their own way, these pint-sized philosophers led the entire conversation. Nearly 40 years later, my lifelong friends and I are still talking about that lesson, although not one of us can remember where we put our reading glasses.

I’ve always had my needs met. But the lesson that day wasn’t only about needs. It was also about wants. I asked the kiddos, “What are five things you would want to take to a deserted island if you knew all of your needs were being met?”

My coworkers and I, all in our 20s and 30s at the time, joked about bringing Sven the hunky masseuse, a library filled with every book in the world, a luxurious bathroom, and a gourmet chef with endless kitchen supplies. The children, not yet burdened by video games or the internet, said exactly what you’d expect: games, junk food, their own water parks, and a roller coaster. One child even requested unlimited ice cream, which frankly may have been the wisest answer given.

Let’s Fine-Tune Our Question

Now, in what should be my more contented years, I find myself thinking that the question needs adjusting. Maybe a deserted island feels too hypothetical. Maybe the better question is: What are the five things you would take if you had a fire and could stop time long enough to grab them?

When I look around my house, I realize that many things I once thought were essential really aren’t. Photos are mostly on my phone, backed up somewhere in “the cloud,” which I picture as a celestial junk closet where God is sitting and moving my stuff around without permission. Documents can be replaced. Social security cards, passports, banking information – annoying to lose, but not irreplaceable.

My husband’s artwork fills our home; carvings and paintings of the birds and animals outside our windows. My grandparents’ antiques are meaningful, even the quirky ones. But if flames were licking at the door, would I really be able to choose between the vintage Tupperware and the antique copper bathwater heater? The honest answer is probably not.

Electronics? Forget it. The TV, computer, and phone can be bought again. I mentally walk through room after room and realize the list of things I’d have to save is surprisingly short.

The Perspective of Age

Because here’s where age changes the question. In our 20s, we thought about comfort. In midlife, we thought about convenience. But now? Many of us have lost people we love. We have learned, sometimes the hard way, that the only things we can’t replace are the memories – those small, unexpected reminders of the people who shaped our lives.

• A handwritten recipe from someone who cooked with love.
• A scrap of your child’s artwork with their backward letters.
• A photo album from before everything went digital.
• A wedding picture of two people who had no idea what was coming but were hopeful for it anyway.
• A letter from someone whose voice you’d give anything to hear again.

These aren’t “things.” They’re proof that love happened here.

So, in the end, I would want to grab the people I love, and the memories that tether me to the people I’ve already had to say goodbye to. Everything else – objects, paperwork, technology – can be replaced or lived without.

If a fire ever forced me to choose, I suspect I’d run out barefoot, hair wild, clutching the memories of the people who shaped me – and maybe, if time allowed, one good bra. (It took a lot of time in the dressing room to find that perfect one!)

And maybe that is where my gratitude finally settles this year; not in the lengthy list of things I own, but in the small list of things I truly could not lose.

And really, that’s enough.

You might also enjoy reading The Beanie Baby Debacle: My Brush with Valulosis.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

If you had to grab one memory-filled object in a fire, what would it be? Why that one? What’s something you didn’t appreciate when you were young that now feels priceless (besides a better metabolism)? What’s the tiniest object in your home that carries the biggest emotional weight (and no, the remote does not count)? If you could freeze one memory forever, which one would you choose – and does it involve someone who is no longer here but still taking up space in your heart?