My father is always quick to point out how easy I have had it here in the U.S. He grew up immediately following the Korean War and watched his family's fortunes rise and fall like the tide. For most of his life, this meant poverty or at the very least, a daily struggle to move forward in life. Small things that I and my son take for granted, like store bought toys were a luxury that my father never experienced for himself but was determined for me to have.
So growing up, while I never always got what I wanted, I never had to go without. The food I wanted to eat, the toys I wanted to have, in some way I always got those things. So there was that emotional legacy, my father provided for me that which he couldn't have himself. And in many ways I recognize this is the dream that all parents have for their children... for them to pass us, to achieve what we could not, to own what we could not, to validate our time here.
Of course, I see that now, I understand that now, but when I was a child I was always furiously wanting. The more toys I could cram into my room the better, my shelves, illuminated by the soft yellow glow of my night light, transformed into a war zone where robots, soldiers and monsters waged a fierce and deadly battle. But my parents were not rich and even if they were to have come into money, I doubt they would have spoiled me in the way that I craved. And growing up, what I craved most of all, were transforming robots. Not transformers, but "Valkyries" from my favorite show "Macross". I begged them for these toys but these toys weren't just hard to find they were expensive. I never quite got what I wanted but I did get toys that were close, a repaint Transformer called "Jetfire" that I would take everywhere and have grand adventures with. But always, in the back of my mind, I recognized that Jetfire was not a Valkyrie and that the autobot symbol on his chest was an abomination.
Years later, long after the plastic on Jetfire had grown yellow and brittle and passed away into legend and glory I found that those valkyries which I had so longed for as a child had been reborn. And I, wishing desperately to heal that valkyrie shaped hole in my heart have scrapped and collected and amassed a collection that embarrasses the me that is today but warms the heart of the 8 year old me, the me that always wanted and yearned but was never fulfilled.
So today, these toys sit on my shelves in places of honor. The Baby looks up at them and asks to play with them and sometimes I let him hold them and smile as he pretends to fly them through the air, making swooshing sounds, knowing that my dreams live on through him, that some part of what I am, who I was, lives on through him, that chain unbroken. And I know that one day, one day soon, he'll ask when those valkyries will be his, so he too can love them and wage fierce battles on worlds that live only in imagination. When that day comes, I'll sit him in my lap, hug him and tell him, "When you get a job son, when you get a job."
