One of the first books I read in English Lit 101 of my first year in college, was Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried. It's an engrossing collection of stories of boys at war in Vietnam, the title representing not only the physical good-luck charms they brought with them from home, but also serving as a metaphor for the weighty burden of their actions, and the stories they tell themselves in order to keep moving forward.



The memory of this book has stayed with me for the last 22 years and came to mind as, one by one, I plucked the items photographed in this book from the washing machine. Though in no way comparing our daily life to war, these things reflect for me a similar concept of objects pocketed by my children that tell a small piece of the story-truth of their day, their secrets, and their inner lives.