Hard-to-capture Styrofoam beads and memories

There it was. It just popped up on my Facebook feed. A man and a woman smiling, sitting in their convertible with a large stuffed giraffe in the back seat. The headline claimed that with this giraffe, they were determined to bring smiles everywhere. I didn’t quite understand the mission. My stomach turned. My eyes hurt. To me, they brought a memory.

We had one of those, my brother and I. My aunt brought it over one day, a random surprise. The neighbor kids were over and we immediately hauled it off into the side bedroom, where we’d been roughhousing. Different than my other animals, it wasn’t soft or cuddly. Its long neck was stiff, its fur was short, scratchy and bristled. The other body parts were similarly stiff but it was the neck that proved the strongest and best suited for whacking each other. This was an animal that demanded action. We weren't looking to make friends with it. It was the eighties, we just wanted to know what it could take. It turned out, not much.

I don’t think that giraffe lasted more than an hour. Before long it burst and big white cloudy masses escaped the body at rapid speed, shooting out and up into the air. The boys continued to whack the body against the bedposts, and each other. As the body grew increasingly limp, those clouds continued floating or falling away, directionless. But we made sure to give them direction. We batted them about, swatting, screaming at them, at each other and at the whole scene. The room was electric. It was snowing. Styrofoam beads covered everything. I could feel them in my hair, on my clothes. They were caught in the curtains and floated across the floor, eventually falling down and getting stuck in the floorboards. If you tried to grab them, they’d move away. Delight.

Then, the great interruption came. The adults must’ve set down their coffee.

“James?! Annie?? What’s going on in there??? …” We could hear my mom coming heavy, toward the room. She swung the door open. There she stood, with a look of horror.

She was mad. She was screaming her mom scream, but the damage had been done. Countless Styrofoam beads covered the room, and with the swing of the door, began moving toward her, and the inner workings of the house. Sure it never got as bad out there, but those Styrofoam beads agitated my mom for years. They were never to be entirely captured.I never once caught my mom smiling about that giraffe, and she was good at smiling about a lot of things. She’d find humor in places most people wouldn’t find any. Years later, when I was an adult, with kids myself and a messy house, she recalled the event with a relatable groan.

This past week we sold our family home, and with it, that side room. Then on Sunday night I learned the new owners would be tearing the whole house down. It didn’t come as a huge surprise. I’d anticipated this, even as I moved about the house in those final weeks and days, packing the last few things, cleaning up the rooms. When it came to the side room, my stomach felt fine, but my eyes still hurt. They stung with tears. I don’t know when my mom collected the last of those Styrofoam beads, but after over four decades of cleaning this house, I’m guessingshe must have.I don’t know if my tears were of sadness, loss or just an overwhelming sense of pride. It doesn’tmatter if they tear the house down, part of my mom’s legacy will be the same regardless: Shetook care. And with that thought, I felt the growing presence of my smile.

Anne Buckvold is a member of the Times Writers' Group. She is a social worker, organizer and artist who lives in St. Cloud with her family. Her column is published the third Sunday of the month.

This article originally appeared on South Bend Tribune: Remembering my mother's legacy of taking care.