Token of Affection

I went to the Foundling Museum yesterday. It's the place where the orphans, the abandoned children were taken.  When mothers took their illegitimate babies to be cared for, they were asked to leave a token to identify the child in case their circumstances changed and they were able to reclaim them later.  They left coins and keys, hairpins and pebbles. When they had nothing to leave as a token, they snipped a piece of fabric from their skirt or from the baby's robe. So many babies were taken here that the Museum's squares of everyday dress material now comprise the largest collection of 18th century fabrics in the world. 

The displays of these small, poor items are heart-wrenching. So little, yet covering every meaning of their word. 

Noun: a thing serving as a visible or tangible representation of a fact, quality or feeling.
Noun: a voucher that can be exchanged for goods or services. 
Adj:  done as a symbolic gesture.

A token is an item that stands for something else. Once you know what it stands for, the item can be anything at all. In this way, shells or small discs of metal become a currency, a slip of paper can be exchanged in store for a gift, a small white stone is a declaration of love. 

We all wind up as orphans sooner or later - this is the way of the world. We are of an age now where, one by one of us, we are losing then burying our parents. As adults, as parents ourselves, we are wise enough and weary enough to know how this is done.  The phone calls, the paperwork, the practical tasks, the triage of items that made up a life. The tokens we choose to keep are not the important things, the valuable things. They are chosen not for merit but for meaning - a meaning that we have created for ourselves. 

And although we are wise enough, and weary enough, and old enough and adult enough now to haul ourselves through this time - we are still children, their children. Whether they leave us at 5 months or 5 years old or 50, no one is quite ready to be an orphan, to hold that token and know it can't swap back for the person who is gone.