No. 31 | Tala's treasures
How do you let go of a childhood? With a little help and a lot of love.
I have a problem with letting go. Mainly: letting go is hard.
Much as I hate to admit it, I’ve inherited a matrilineal tendency to hoard. Just as my grandmother refused to let go of Christmas wrapping paper and Lily’s Peanut Butter jars, and my mother refuses to let go of, well, pretty much anything, I hung on to as many of my daughter’s baby things as I could, for longer than I should have.
Clothes ages 0 to 8, shoes, books, toys, bottles, monitor, strollers and cribs (plural), bedding, high chair—I shoved it all into every nook and cranny possible, pushing the storage capacity of our modest Amsterdam flat to its limit, for almost a decade.
Each time I stuffed something into a closet that groaned in protest, I told myself: this will come in handy when I have another baby. But the second baby never came.
After countless conversations—when we would dance towards the possibility, then scurry away from it—Marlon and I decided that life was full enough with just the three of us. We didn’t need another child for our family to feel perfect and complete. I had never been possessed by the biological compulsion to have another baby, as a number of my friends had. I had gotten over the guilt of being “selfish,” as I would have been labeled in my culture, for not providing my poor solitary child with a playmate that shared her DNA.
Over the years, doubt had crystallized into certainty. Our daughter was it.
Now all I needed to do was get rid of all her stuff.
I wish I’d been more disciplined about decluttering—doing a little at a time, instead of holding on to so much for so long. The task had grown into a mammoth, both in physical bulk and emotional weight. Each time I attempted to face it, sadness would suck me in like a whirlpool.
It was Conor who came up with the idea of photographing Tala’s treasures.
“If you like, we can bring some of her things into the studio and take pictures of them,” he offered. “That way, you can keep the pictures and look back at the memories anytime. Then it makes it easier to let the actual stuff go.”
I loved the idea, and I loved him for suggesting it.
Perhaps that’s the first step.
Whatever it is that you need to let go of: share it.
Then, allow others to contribute. Get people involved. The right ones.
How do you know they’re the right ones? The right people bring energy.
Energy is essential for the process of transformation: of navigating the unknown without a clear outcome, of turning something difficult into something beautiful.
While Marlon and I sorted through eight years of childhood possessions, Conor built a set by cutting shapes out of plywood and painting them in bright, powdery-soft colors. We enlisted his dear friend Saskia, seasoned stylist and fellow artistic spirit, to arrange the clothes and toys into artful layouts.
On shoot day, Marlon helped me haul six bags of baby things into the studio and left. Piled on tables and spread out on the floor, all the stuff I’d hung on to looked like a mountain of goodbyes I didn’t want to climb, a landscape of farewells I wasn’t ready to traverse.
Saskia held aloft her industrial-strength garment steamer like Gandalf brandishing his staff. “I have a plan,” she announced, her voice ringing with purpose and authority. “We’re going to make four or five pictures.”
This sounded wise. Conor and Saskia were professionals who worked on commercial shoots, where five images was a reasonable and expected target for a workday.
“Then the pictures… are going to have sub-pictures…” she trailed off, her voice becoming as small and sly as a crafty elf. I burst out laughing.
It was a day of laughing and crying like a crazy lady. Whenever I picked up a garment to steam it, memories would blur my vision.
The pink Hello Kitty raincoat she wore for our first picnic at the cherry blossom park, when a photojournalist thought she was Japanese and snapped her picture for Het Parool. The tiny Spanish patent leather shoes with grosgrain laces, bought on her third birthday in Madrid. The cheap yapping dog, a surprise from a babysitter in Riga, that became an obsession.
A memory in every sweater, sock and soft toy. Her childhood in my hands.
The right people understand. When my tears started flowing, Saskia came over to give me a hug. “Nobody told me it would be this hard,” I said.
“Oh, lieverd. You know what else nobody tells you?” she said. “That after you’re done with your kids, you have to start with your parents.”
Plans unravel when you’re having fun: we ended up with 18 pictures and one GIF. “We never get to just play like this at work,” Saskia said.
As a stylist, Saskia was a wonder to watch, a blend of experience, instinct, and imagination at work. She took her time to compose each layout: allowing colors and objects to speak to her, attending to each detail with precision and focus, touching each object with tenderness and care.
Then there’s Conor.
More than just a photographer, he is a builder and maker. His sets were a self-contained world where toys and books come alive, coats and shoes dance, and everything is possible.
Then he gave this world a glow that touched each object, as worn and chewed-up as some of them were, so that everyone can see what I already know. That every one of these things is precious and loved.
Love made visible. For it is love, more than skill or talent, that makes everything beautiful and special in our eyes.
Do you see it? Tell me if you do, I can’t be the only one.
That day we turned memories into sets, layouts, compositions, light, color, photographs. Sadness into play. Childhood into art.
It’s magic, really. The magic of transformation.
The magic of letting go.
Parenting is the one area in my life where the momentum of letting go is relentless. It can happen bit by bit and yet knock you completely off guard. I still remember what it was like to bring home my week-old baby from the hospital and wonder where my newborn had gone.
I let go of the baby over and over again, as she grew into a child before my eyes. Now I must let go of the child that baby has become.
My daughter turns 10 today. In the Netherlands, a child becomes a teenager (tiener) at 10 (tien). Far too early by my reckoning, but what can you do?
These photographs were shot in October of 2021. Unsurprisingly, I hung on to them for too long. But I’ve finally started to give away the clothes. Clear space. Choose a few favorites to keep. And now, share what we made.
After all, I’ll always have the memories—and the pictures, just as Conor said.
So, how do you let go of a childhood?
With creativity, playfulness and imagination.
With magic.
With love.
Has creativity helped you let go of something? Have you ever transformed something difficult into something beautiful? What was it, and how was that process for you? I would love to hear about it.
This is amazing! What a lovely way to honor a childhood.
So lovely. I might be crying. When my parents gave up the family home, I took pictures to remind me.