Our new friend, Joelle, is here staying with us for a week. We met Joelle last summer when we were camping at Lassen National Park. She was at the campsite next to ours and we got acquainted over a campfire one night, while Eli cooked an entire glued-together bag of marshmallows on a big stick. I'd stuck the marshmallows in the freezer after our last camping trip to save them for our next trip. When they finally defrosted in our food box, a scientific transformation had taken place. The marshmallows had lost their individuality; they'd merged into an unidentifiable glob of plastic goo. Eli speared the whole sticky mess and cooked it anyway, a flaming marshmallow torch in the bright glow of our campfire.
      Joelle has a way with children and she made herself right at home with our family. She was on a four-month solo trip, hiking the Pacific Crest Trail, which runs all the way from Mexico to Canada. She was hungry for contact with people. We talked late into that night. She learned about Karyn's recent adventure being lost in the Sierras. I talked about my hopes for the baby that was growing in my womb, and we learned about her life as an itinerant dollmaker, puppeteer, and artist. We spent the next few days together, sharing hikes, meals and plunges in icy mountain lakes. When it was time for us to go our separate ways, we invited her to visit us when she got off the trail.

      This is her third visit to our family. Last night, after Eli was asleep and as Karyn tried to soothe a crying Lizzy, Joelle sat on our couch and darned socks. She worked on three pairs of mine, the last a thick purple wool pair I have loved for years, but was about to throw away. There was a big huge hole in the heel — in fact the heel wasn't there anymore. "This hole is so big," I told her, "Maybe I should just toss them."
      Joelle took the sock. "Let me see what I can do."
      I looked up and watched her at work, admiring her quiet, steady concentration. "I can't believe you're darning socks," I said. "I've never seen anyone do that before."
      "These socks cost close to ten dollars a pair," she said.
      "But I've had them for ten years. I've gotten plenty of use out of them."
      "It's not just the money. It's the energy it takes to make a new pair."
      So Joelle darned while I paid bills. A half hour later, while I was writing out a check for the electricity bill, she said, "Voila," and tossed me the sock I had been about to discard. "It's a little rough now," she said, but as you wear it, it'll smooth down."

      This morning I got up, took a shower and put on my darned purple socks. Wearing them, the world felt different. My feet felt warm; the socks both familiar and alive. A sense of well-being spread through me as I thought about the concern and love that had gone into saving this one old pair of socks.
      I thought about my immigrant grandparents. I'm sure my grandmother darned socks. Her family was poor and nothing was wasted. My mother went to college and had moved up into the middle class. But she still clipped coupons and saved green stamps. I remember licking them and putting them in paper books, saving up for big prizes — like the shiny, new toaster oven we picked up at the Green Stamp redemption center in Asbury Park, New Jersey.
      I don't clip coupons or darn socks. In my world, things are thrown away and replaced. Garbage accumulates at an alarming rate. For months Karyn and I have been talking about the way we live, about what matters to us really, about what we value and what we want to teach our kids. Is all this stuff really the legacy we want to pass on to our children?

      Last Chanukah, as Eli got accustomed to the ritual of lighting the menorah and receiving a simple gift each night, he grew to expect presents. Weeks later, when his new sister was born, thoughtful visitors brought carefully selected gifts to him, the big brother. Eli grew to expect this, too. He'd run to the door whenever anybody rang, and shout out (as only an almost-four-year-old can do), "What did you bring for me?"

      We've taken great care in selecting toys for Eli. He has non-gender specific, open-ended creative toys, often made of natural materials. He has wooden blocks, Brio trains, dinosaurs, wooden figurines, multi-ethnic dolls, Legos, glue and scissors, pipe cleaners, tape and paper, play dough, and an extensive library of books. The only guns he plays with are constructed by him with his imagination. He spends hours in elaborate fantasy play and I do what I can to support his creativity, to keep up with his incessant flow of ideas.
      Yet Eli has enough things to equip a small preschool. I often think about what we are teaching him — not just by the nature of what we choose for him, but by how many. When we go to the beach, Eli is happy with clumps of seaweed and whatever driftwood he can find. At home, in the midst of all his carefully-selected, politically-correct toys, he often is at a loss for what to do, hanging on to my leg and whining.
      It is hard to say "no" to things after a lifetime of acquisitions. It is hard to change a pattern of consuming, to shift my focus from "busyness" and "doing" and "things" to just being together as a family. It is hard to throw things away, to pass them on, to say, "Enough." Yet as I look around at all the clutter that fills our lives, my feet happily dancing in their purple socks, I am determined to try.