Thoughts on a Blue Dresser
I am stupidly sad over a blue dresser. An IKEA dresser, no less, so stupid to be sad over.
It was the exact shade of a cadet blue crayon, one of my favorite shades in the Crayola box of 64. I bought it close to fifteen years ago. I picked it out in the IKEA showroom, drawn as I was to my ideal blend of farmhouse shabby chic. My own piece of Johanna Gaines, but attainable.
I brought it home and scattered the pieces across the bedroom floor. I was completely overwhelmed. My son Tuck put his hand on my shoulder, and he said, “Mommy, we are a family, and that’s better than a team. We can do this.”
We did it. I remember when I finished building it, my mom took a picture. She said, “Tricia, don’t look so tired. Look victorious. Because you are.” I was learning I could be both.
Its ten drawers with yellow lining did the job for years to come. Years I couldn’t have imagined or predicted. Years that went according to plan, and years that varied wildly.
We gave the dresser away this week. Gave, because I didn’t feel like I could charge for it on the marketplace. It is tattered, nicked, and even covered with stickers of dinosaurs, the effect of a little boy’s whim of decoration.
As we helped the recipients load it into their car, we found treasures hiding in the drawers that I had been assured were empty. What remained? There was orange duct tape inside the drawers, labeling places for underwear and t-shirts and Legos. I found a penny, a yellow hospital sock with white tread on the bottom, and a paper receipt from somebody’s homecoming date. Those artifacts alone create a tableau of raising little boys into young men.
The dresser lives in somebody else’s house now, so there’s no use crying over spilled milk or given-away dressers.
Except I learned this week about the IKEA effect, the psychological bias in which we value something more highly when we have helped to create or assemble it ourselves. After struggling through the instructions and the assembly process, a person becomes more attached to this particular item than one that is similar or even identical.
Why does this happen? Because we tend to treat our labor as evidence that the result is valuable. Because completion builds confidence. Finishing something makes us feel proud. The creation feels personal. The object becomes associated with our identify: I made this. If we invested effort, we’re motivated to believe the outcome was worth it.
I loved that dresser.
In related news, people are actively moving out of my house. A son is getting married and training to work as a first responder.
Another son is going to college for vocal performance, and his instruments are lined up to the leave the house: the keyboard, the guitar, and even his voice that so often rings through the hallways.
Launching Eagles has been a process, a nest with a revolving door. They leave, they come back. They leave, they come back. And I have prided myself in taking it all in stride, in reminding myself that this independence was the goal. But the leaving feels bigger this time. Final.
It’s possible that all of the above, the stupid sadness over the dresser and the attachment to fleeting things I never meant to keep forever – it might be projection.
It might be about strong men finding their way. My confidence in their completion, the personal identity involved. I invested everything I’ve had. We’ve been a family, and that’s better than a team.
It’s easier to be sad over a dresser.
