Cheap Plastic Crap From China

My eldest child will be leaving the nest this weekend, as she heads off to her freshman year in college. As all good mothers do [not] I spent the last 9 months or so beating myself up for all the ways I've failed as a parent. Perhaps one of my chief failures in my children's eyes, is that I am such an anti-consumer. It pains me to go shopping. It particularly pains me to shop in big box stores. I walk into one and within minutes my brain shuts down; the predictable results are either that I walk out again with nothing or I fill the cart with things I didn't know that I needed until I got there and saw them. (Sock monkey pajamas? A Hello Kitty toaster? Oh, yeah!)

So it's "back-to-school" time. Not only does that mean at least one shopping trip, but as a teacher I am also grieving the approaching end of the only sane part of my year. (Or so it seems right now. It's actually OK. I love my job.) And I'm pretty emotional about my child leaving home.

Both of my children have lists of recommended school supplies, so I steel myself for a trip to Target, which for some reason seems kinder and gentler to liberals like me than WalMart. (I think that's only an illusion.) My eldest has a list as long as your arm, and this time she's not asking, "May I buy this?" She's just loading up the shopping cart and my brain is way too addled to question what she's picking up. Two hours and $200 later when I'm back at home I begin to wonder, "Why did she need to buy a little plastic box with drawers for her make-up and jewelry at college? What has she kept her make-up and jewelry in for the last 5 years?" And so on. (To her credit, she saw how freaked out I was and offered to pay for the stuff herself, with her very meager savings. But I want her to feel cared for, and if this is one way she can feel cared for at this time, then it's important that I do it.)

I have a Depression-era mentality about stuff -- and I wasn't even born then! I had a very comfortable upbringing, where a fun family outing was to go to Treasure Island and buy cheap plastic crap, probably from Japan. Somehow, cheap plastic crap seemed higher quality in those days. (It was a better grade of plastic used in the fake vomit that I gleefully acquired from The Moon Fun Shop.) What did I do when I went to college? I think I furnished my abode from off the curb or St. Vinnie's.

When it came to my own kids, I was just this side of a Waldorf philosophy for most of their childhoods. I made them many of their toys and clothes, or mail-ordered them. (A friend just told me, in the midst of this giant toxic toy recall, that even the German brand toys from the upscale toy stores are now made in China.) I capitulated to Barbie only after much soul searching. Playmobil was probably the biggest toy "system" I bought into -- mainly because I loved the animals and pirates.

As they've gotten older, both of my kids have rebelled against that both consciously and unconsciously. And I understand that my eldest, when she goes off to college, doesn't want to be perceived as weird by her peers, some of whom will probably be quite wealthy. So she wants new sheets for her bed, not the 101 Dalmation sheets we bought when she was four. She doesn't want to keep her make-up in one of the old tea canisters that are ubiquitous in our house, because I can't bear to throw things that seem "sturdy" away. I keep talking to my eldest about locating the thrift stores and food co-op in her new town. She rolls her eyes (inwardly). But maybe given 6 months, a year, she'll seek them out.

And my youngest? She's still young enough to want to please me. Or maybe she's just different from her sister. She seems a lot more willing to recycle, reuse or go to the thrift store. I worry about how much she's just burying her resentment, so I try to balance things out. I try to model seeking quality items, things that will last. (Although that's a hard thing to find at Target.) It's a little heartbreaking when she's explaining why she needs new scissors for 6th grade this year because the ones we bought her in 3rd grade finally broke and they were kind of small for her hands anyway. It was a "bad mom" moment, when I questioned whether I'd gone too far. (As if she's a mind reader, this daughter just now walked into the room and announced, "I like my new scissors!")

I recognize that I am something of a curmudgeon and perhaps could even be called eccentric by some. I do hope that my kids, as they move out into the world, will come to appreciate my ethic somewhat -- even if they apply it in a different way.