Canned Happiness

She won't give up the Tinker-Toys. About twice a year, we go through her bedroom and gather up all the toys she doesn't play with anymore and haul them off to Goodwill, saving the Legos and Brio train and assorted basket of action-figures, McDonald's toys and garage-sale Weebles for my baby-nieces visits.

Each time we make a pass through her room, I pick up the giant, tube-like can and ask, "What about this?" and every single time, she answers, "Ummmm, no, not yet" and I return it to the floor of her closet, where it is easily accessible should she yearn to construct a disk-and-rod swingset or a ferris-wheel or a big, giant, spoked circle. I haven't seen her touch the Tinker Toys in years. I don't know what magic they hold for her. Maybe she's waiting for the maturity and dexterity required to actually construct something recognizable. Maybe she and her girlfriends secretly play with them during those mysterious Tween Sleepovers. Maybe she's waiting for Tater and I to grow old and senile and she's going to fashion a Parental-Head-Bonking-Device as payback for all the trash we made her take out, the dishes she had to load, and the poop she had to scoop.

But that doesn't sound like Mackenzie. Really, the reason I think she is reluctant to part with the Tinker Toys is that stored safely in that blue paper-and-plastic cylinder is the Memory of Dillon playing with her on the floor. They used to spend hours sitting on the living room floor, surrounded by sticks and spools and giant sheets of instruction. She would watch, earnestly, while her big brother would create a playground out of nothing. Then she would add Tiny Spiderman to a swing or Happy Meal Pooh to the ferris wheel. For days after, we would all have to circumnavigate the tiny little world they made together, until I had to vacuum or planned a dinner party and it would all be scooped up and returned to the can, waiting for the next time her Hero looked at her and said, "Hey, Mac, you want to play Tinker Toys?"