Monsieur Geroux collected small good things. The unexpected sound of birdsongs, a half-price sale at the bakery, a smile from a passing child. Storing them in his mind for later, when needed. –Lily Graham, The Last Restaurant in Paris

I started young. With my 15-cent-allowance in my pocket, I headed directly to the mezzanine of Kaufman-Wernert Department store in downtown Kearney, Nebraska. There amidst bunches of gaudy, artificial flowers were trays of small glass animals: dogs, cats, horses, forest and jungle creatures. Most cost a dime, so a quarter bought you two treasures. I could never be rushed; I would look through the boxes at every animal, searching for just the right ones. The top of my bedroom dresser held my collection of small, good things, which grew and changed as I did. Before I moved to the dorm for college, the collection held a legion of glassed animals, a POW bracelet, my great-grandmother’s blue glass powder box, and an antique iron elephant bank I’d inherited from some relative. As I opened my eyes each morning, It gave me great pleasure to survey my small treasures.

Today, a milk glass dish in my office holds the small, good things my grandchildren and I have collected over the years: snail shells, buckeyes, acorns, and unique stones. As lovely as these things are in their own rights, they pale in comparison to the small, good moments during which we found them. What gives me the greatest pleasure these days is the knowledge that my grandchildren have developed the sensibility to see and appreciate the objects and experiences of our ordinary days. Having such eyes transforms the ordinary to the extraordinary. You can’t put a price on this. This gift–and it is a gift, indeed–bestows wonder on a world that too many find mundane and simply bearable.

During one of my guest visits to an elementary classroom, I was preparing them for a creative writing exercise by asking them about their own small, good things, their keepsakes. I always came prepared with a toolbox of activities, for I’d learned early that 8-year-olds could often fly through what I’d prepared, devouring exercises like a woodchipper. So, I’d anticipated that this keepsake activity would be a kind of warm-up and had designated a few minutes to work through it. But I was wrong. As I asked the class about their keepsakes, hands went up and stayed up. Kids patiently waited for their turn to share their keepsake with their classmates. And they listened with an intensity that took my breath away. As each student shared, a reverent hush came over the room, and all eyes fixed on the speaker. One by one, they shared their treasures: a pocket watch passed down from grandfather to grandson, a magic fountain pen from a vacation gift store, a locket that opened to reveal a friend’s photo, a frog dagger (this from a tiny, freckled girl who announced that her grandfather was keeping it for her until she was “more responsible”), and a Nolan Ryan autographed baseball (this from a tall boy in a desk that barely contained him who said, quietly, that this was a gift from his mother weeks before her death).

I was not prepared for the power of these small, good things to transform an elementary classroom into a museum of treasures. The marvel of it was that these kids didn’t have to actually see or touch these treasures to appreciate them. They could imagine them. In an article in Science, “‘Like a film in my mind’: hyperphantasia and the quest to understand vivid imagination,” David Robson cites studies that suggest that hyperphantasia, the condition of having extremely vivid mental imagery, is far more common among children. One study by Professor Ilona Kovacs at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary reveals how our brains store more sensory details in infancy, details which are slowly replaced by more abstract ideas as we age. Professor Kovacs writes, “The child’s memories offer a more concrete appreciation of the world, and it seems that only a small percentage of people can maintain this in later life.” Standing in this room of 8-year-olds, I could feel the power of their sensory details and their profound appreciation of the concrete world.

Years and many such classroom visits later, I lamented the loss of such details that were too quickly replaced by “right answers” and generalizations. I might ask a kindergartener what she had for breakfast, and she’d lay out a smorgasbord of details before me: “Well, I wanted to have the new Lucky Charms with the birthdaty cake sprinkled marshmallows, but my brother ate them all. So, I had to have a frozen waffle. But it was really good, too, because I spread Nutella on it before I put syrup on. It’s really good this way. You should try it.” If I asked her 5th grade brother the same question, I’d get a much different response: “I don’t know. Cereal, I think.” By fifth grade, most children have learned to generalize “cereal” for the host of sensory details they might offer as kindergarteners. The small, good things that once delighted them are relegated to childhood, and abstractions mark the passage into adolescence.

Over the decades during which I’ve taught creative writing, I’ve mourned how quickly we lose our love for small, good things. And for small, good moments. Perhaps, what I really mourn is our propensity to rush children from details into ideas. Don’t get me wrong: I love ideas, having devoted much of my life to reading, discussing, and teaching some of the world’s greatest ideas from the world’s greatest thinkers. I understand the value of learning to generalize, to draw big ideas from literary works and experience. Still, it seems a shame that we not only rush children into the world of ideas but that we also communicate–consciously or not–that this world is preferable and should replace any childish love of detail.

I came to my own love of small, good things naturally–both through genes and through modeling. As my siblings and I prepare to sell our family home, the process of cleaning and sorting has resulted in so many small, good things: paper weights, wooden trinkets, Depression glass bowls and plates (lovingly restored and painted by my mother), pigeon paraphenalia (collected by my father, a homing pigeon raiser and racer), letters, notes, papers, and photos. All of my ideas about what makes a good home have grown from these things. Through who they were and how they lived, my parents modeled how to see the ordinary world as extraordinary. It was years into adulthood when I realized–much to my surprise–that I’d grown up barely middle-class. For me, my life with my parents and siblings had seemed unusually blessed, marked with a deep love for each other and the world we lived in. The things my parents leave behind testify to their power to transport us again into Christmases and birthdays, Sunday afternoon drives in the country, meals around the family table. Our family house will soon pass to another, but the little pieces of our lives there have found special places in our own homes.

I’m not sure if it’s possible to better nuture and sustain the natural hyperphantasia of children. But I think we should try. There is time enough for abstractions and generalizations. There may be far too little time for those small, good things which color our lives so brightly.

Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy.
― Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses 

Constancy is not a flashy virtue. Dressing modestly and speaking demurely, it lives quietly in a noisy world. Few champion its cause or sing its praises, and many consider it to be old-fashioned and just plain boring. On the dance floor where virtues such as courage, determination, and passion whirl wildly about, constancy stands at the edge, a wallflower with a glass of warm punch in her hand.

But I confess: I’m a big fan of the quiet virtues. A few weeks ago, I was at my granddaughter’s trackmeet. As a former sprinter, I still get unreasonably nervous when I watch running events. When Gracyn took the track to run the 3,000 meters, I realized that I was holding my breath. And then I realized that I’d better relax and breathe because she had 8 laps to run. At dusk, the wind picked up and whipped across the metal bleachers. On the track below, the high school girl runners looked particulalry vulnerable with their bare legs and thin jerseys. After the first 800 meters, I watched Gracyn on the back straight-away and thought: pick it up. But I was also painfully aware that I had no experience as a distance runner and no real idea about pacing a 3,000 meter run. Still, I could see the runner a few meters ahead of her and willed her to take her before the curve. With each lap, however, Gracyn’s pace remained the same. It was as if she were a metronome of will, ticking off lap after lap with constancy. Though she didn’t win, she did place.

Weekly columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Peggy Noonan claims that [p]art of courage is simple consistency. Novelist Cormac McCarthy echoes the same sentiment when he writes Long before morning I knew that what I was seeking to discover was a thing I’d always known. That all courage was a form of constancy [All the Pretty Horses]. There is something courageous about taking the track alone and running 3,000 meters. And there’s something quietly remarkable about running a consistent pace you can sustain until the very end.

Oh, there are those like Irish poet and playwright Oscar Wilde who argue that consistency is the hallmark of the unimaginative. No doubt, Wilde wouldn’t have been impressed with Gracyn’s run that night. Nor would he be impressed with anyone who lives and performs with that sort of constancy. We often find comfort and joy, however, in the very constancy he claims is unimaginative. I always knew that my grandma would make me a chocolate pie for every family dinner. There would be other pies, of course, but there would always be chocolate pie. My grandma might have been more imaginative, branching out into coconut or banana cream. If she had, though, my disappointment would’ve been palpable.

Pie is one thing; love is quite another. My parents’ love for each other wasn’t flashy. My dad’s idea of a perfect first date was a dime cup of coffee and a cozy spot behind a haystack in a field where thousands of Sandhill cranes were feeding. My mom’s Christmas gift to him one year was a sweatshirt on which she had printed: Strictly for the Birds. Their love story wouldn’t have made great reality TV with its elaborate dates, grand gestures, and Oscar-worthy proposals. Their love story was not the sort that flashed but invariably fizzled after the filming is done, but rather one of quiet constancy through sickness and health, for richer and for poorer. This is the kind of constancy on which to stake your life.

Today, realtors will begin showing my family home at 611 West 27th in Kearney, Nebraska. For my parents and siblings, grandchildren, cousins, neighbors, friends, visiting poets and pigeon-racers, this home has been a reliable place to gather. My family home is an ordinary house whose walls my mother lovingly filled with family photos, my father’s poetry and awards, and artwork. The wall at the top of the stairs has been a family gallery with photos that range from the endearing to the humiliating (you know the kind: the official middle school photos with braces, questionable hair styles and attire). Still, in spite of our pleas that some of these photos might be removed, they remained. And there has been something quite wonderful about knowing that every time you climbed the stairs, you could expect to find the same photo gallery spread out before you: a constant reminder of you of who you are and to whom you belong.

In her novel, Her Name Was Rose, Claire Allan writes:

Watching the sea never ceased to ground me. It was unchangeable. It was constant. Whatever happened – whatever seasons came and went, whatever way the wind blew, whatever was going on in the world, whatever was going on in the lives of the people who walked along the shores – the waves always just did what they did best. They came and went.

I know that my family home is a house: a foundation, a set of walls, and a roof. And yet, even as I understand the necessity of selling it, I’m grieving the loss of it. Like the sea, it has been unchangeable and constant for me, a port in the storms of life, a place that has blessed so many simply because we’ve spent time there. I mourn the loss of such constancy, for it has sustained me in ways I’ve only begun to understand.

For many of us, things can’t move and change quickly enough. We entertain ourselves by scrolling quickly on our phones and computers, searching for the next image or video which amuses us–or at least moves us. In the background of all this, however, are those people, places, and things which remain quietly but firmly constant. I’ll set my heart to these.

My Granddaughter Runs the 3,000 meters

At dusk, the sun bruises the horizon 
with deep orchid, and the south wind whips 
across the metal bleachers.

On the track below, she is ticking off meters, 
each lap the same as the last.

As former sprinter turned spectator,
I stuff my gloved hands in my pockets, turn up my collar 
and think: pick it up, pick it up, pick it up.

But she is ticking off curves and straight-aways
with bare legs that are pistons of resolve.

She is a metronome of will:
pounding out strides in iambic regularity,
her face cloudless and open.

On the far straight,
she drops her head into the wind
as the bell signals the last lap.
And I think: she will start her kick now.

But her pace—furiously constant—holds. 

As she takes the last curve, I can read her, 
measure after steadfast measure.

And I think: I will set my heart to this.

--Shannon Vesely