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It’s weird how collections are born. At least in my house, it’s never a matter of deciding “I’m going to start collecting Rene Zelweger DVD’s.” In fact, I rarely know that I have a collection until the collection is well underway. Then it becomes more like OCD. I do have a collection of RZ movies. It started with Bridget Jones, of course, and from there I just really liked several others so I bought them. Now I will buy one of her movies just because she’s in it, without even knowing what it’s about or if it’s any good. She’s the only actor I collect. Similarly, I once stuck a refrigerator magnet on my filing cabinet one day and now the entire surface is covered with them. I send off for them, I snag them from doctor’s offices, I steal them from the refrigerators of my friends and family. I would do shameful things for another magnet to add to my collection. I also have an old jewelry box full of those pins that people used to wear (maybe people still do wear them, I don’t know. I never do.), are they called brooches? Little bejeweled knick-knacks with a safety pin attached to the back? Christmas trees, cats, flowers, clowns—some of them with gems missing. This collection got started when my mother gave me a dozen or so when I was a kid. I kept them, and now I collect them. I never do anything with them but look at them, but they are dear to me. Someday perhaps I’ll give them to a granddaughter. Is this the definition of a collection: a group of similar objects that one keeps specifically not to use, but whose value to its owner is simply in having it and watching it grow? I never watch a Zelweger movie more than once. Why do I need to own them all? I never read the ads on my refrigerator magnet and I never use them to hold things to the filing cabinet. They’re just there for the purpose of multiplying. The pins though (brooches?), they have a purpose. As that collection grows from a seed planted by my mother when she was younger than I am now, it’s a part of her that I can touch and look at and pass on to someone who never had the privilege to know my mother. That collection of tacky costume jewelry is priceless.
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