Life & Place · A Decembers list
The things you couldn't fall asleep without
A blanket worn thin at one corner, gripped in exactly the same spot every night. A bear with an ear chewed soft. A cigar box or a coffee tin where the good marbles and the foreign coins lived.
This is the list for those things. One line each: what it was, whether it had a name, and where it is now.
Free to start. Private from the first word.
Where this list lives
This is a list in Decembers — the place a life gets written down one question at a time.
Decembers asks the questions no one thought to ask, keeps the answers in one permanent Chronicle, and holds them on one Timeline that reads in order. You answer. Decembers does the writing.
- Lists
- A list for every kind of life, and every turn one takes. Pick one and start answering.
- Timeline
- Your answers arrange themselves in order. Seeing a whole life laid out this way is something else.
- Inner Circle
- Not social media. The few people you name are the only ones it is ever shared with.
Begin with one list. The rest follows.
One line is enough
Name the blanket and you're back in the bed you had at six, the exact spot you rubbed the satin edge, the sound of the house settling after you were told lights out.
No record anywhere holds these. There is no receipt for a bear, no photograph of the coffee tin where you kept your best things. They belong to the child alone, and the child grew up and stopped mentioning them, and so they slipped out of the family story entirely. Yet you can still feel the weight of the toy, still see the worn corner, still name it if it had a name. That is more than most official documents can say.
A book about your childhood never gets written because it seems too small to sit down for. But one blanket is not too small for one line. Then you remember the tin, and the tin brings the drawer it lived in, and the drawer brings the room. The list fills the way a shelf fills, one object at a time, and the ones who come after you learn what you loved before you knew the word for it.
How it works
- 01
Pick this list
It’s waiting, already written. There is no blank page to face.
- 02
Fill in what comes
A year, a line, a photograph. Five minutes or an hour.
- 03
Invite who was there
They add what you forgot. You decide what stays.
- 04
Share it, or don’t
One quiet page for your Inner Circle. No link, no feed.
What ends up on this list
The one you couldn't sleep without
The blanket, the bear, the rag doll carried until it was more thread than cloth. The thing that had to be in the bed or there was no sleeping. Often it had a name only you and your mother used, a name that made no sense to anyone else and never needed to.
The tin or box of saved things
Children are collectors. A cigar box, a Band-Aid tin, a coffee can with the label soaked off, and inside it the arrowhead, the smooth stone, the foreign coin, the feather. Note where you kept it and what treasure inside mattered most, the one you'd have grabbed first.
What became of it
Some things were lost on a family trip and mourned for weeks. Some were quietly thrown out and never forgiven. Some are still in a box in an attic, waiting. Say where each one went, even if the answer is that you simply don't know, which is its own kind of ending.
By what it was
- Blankets
- The satin-edged binding, the corner rubbed bare, the particular way you held it against your face to fall asleep.
- Stuffed animals
- Bears, dogs, rabbits with an ear chewed soft or an eye replaced by a mismatched button, loved down to the stuffing.
- Dolls
- The rag doll, the hard-faced hand-me-down, the one whose painted cheeks wore off from being kissed.
- The saved tin
- Buckeyes, wheat pennies, marbles, a lucky rock, a bird feather, all kept in a chocolate box or a coffee can under the bed.
- The last toy standing
- The one wooden truck or tin soldier or jacks set that outlasted everything else and somehow never got given away.
- Where they went
- Lost, worn out, packed in an attic, or passed to a younger cousin who never knew what it had meant.
Other lists you may like
Start with any one of them. Every answer lands on the same Timeline.
Begin
A record of what a child loves before there are words for it
Start with the one you couldn't sleep without. Its name, its worn corner, and where it is now. The tin and the rest will follow it onto the page.