Magic Dust
I spent the afternoon constructing high-rise buildings, driving various cars and piloting planes with my son. It could have been the 1970s.....even the dust from that decade was with us.
One of my most memorable Christmas gifts as a child was the Girder and Panel building set that I received one year sometime in the mid-70s. It was a building set that allowed me to construct skyscrapers by using plastic posts and girders. These girders allowed me to build towers that extended well into the sky - well at least three feet into it (measured from the wooden parquet floor of the living room of that apartment in Saint-Laurent).
Part of my collection of toys were also cars and airplanes. The cars are long gone but the planes are toys that my son now plays with...along with that Girder and Panel set.
So today we constructed, we drove and we flew. As we unboxed the building set my eyes noticed the dust that was sitting on some of the roof panels that make up part of the toy. The corners of those pieces had some dust in their corners...dust that had been there for decades.
For a moment the dust was magical.
If it were to be put under a microscope what would it have revealed? Flakes of my eight year old skin? Maybe bits of the varnish of that parquet floor? Microscopic flakes of my white and blue North Star running shoes? Fur of my black and white stuffed panda bear?
For a brief moment, this afternoon, I was taken back. Not just by the fact that I was playing with my son, thirty years later, with those same toys but also by some magic dust. Dust that was carelessly left on a some now demolished building, boxed and kept with loving care by my parents so that one day, another generation could play. Dust that today was blown off some pieces by a boy and which unknowingly mixed not only memories of the 70s with the realities of the 10s but also physical particles of those distant decades.
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
One of my most memorable Christmas gifts as a child was the Girder and Panel building set that I received one year sometime in the mid-70s. It was a building set that allowed me to construct skyscrapers by using plastic posts and girders. These girders allowed me to build towers that extended well into the sky - well at least three feet into it (measured from the wooden parquet floor of the living room of that apartment in Saint-Laurent).
Part of my collection of toys were also cars and airplanes. The cars are long gone but the planes are toys that my son now plays with...along with that Girder and Panel set.
So today we constructed, we drove and we flew. As we unboxed the building set my eyes noticed the dust that was sitting on some of the roof panels that make up part of the toy. The corners of those pieces had some dust in their corners...dust that had been there for decades.
For a moment the dust was magical.
If it were to be put under a microscope what would it have revealed? Flakes of my eight year old skin? Maybe bits of the varnish of that parquet floor? Microscopic flakes of my white and blue North Star running shoes? Fur of my black and white stuffed panda bear?
For a brief moment, this afternoon, I was taken back. Not just by the fact that I was playing with my son, thirty years later, with those same toys but also by some magic dust. Dust that was carelessly left on a some now demolished building, boxed and kept with loving care by my parents so that one day, another generation could play. Dust that today was blown off some pieces by a boy and which unknowingly mixed not only memories of the 70s with the realities of the 10s but also physical particles of those distant decades.
Let me know what you think about what you have just read. Please and thanks!
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