We made it to the final story in our series. If you’re just joining us, Sheeba of This, Right Here and I have been exploring the topic of our complicated relationships with our things. Each fictional story inspired by South Indian family life, touches on the theme of holding on and letting go of our things. And I’ve been adding my perspective as a connection-first home organizer and parent educator. I hope you’ll go back and read them all. I’ll add the links to the bottom of this post.
Without further ado, here’s today’s story:
Riya, the Overwhelmed Child
by Sheeba
The house was full that weekend — Achachan’s Shashtipoorthi, his 60th birthday celebration, had brought everyone home, cousins spilling out of every room, slippers piling up at the door in a heap nobody could sort by owner.
A Sadhya was being prepared. Men were decorating the house with garlands. Raghu was scraping coconut and comparing the busy life of Mumbai with the serenity of Kerala.
“When is Rajesh Aliyan’s flight arriving?”, Raghu was asking Nikita about her husband.
Aami and Dev had just grabbed a handful of banana chips and were running, and Nikita was scolding them about running between people.
In the kitchen, aroma from the erissery, injimpuli and aviyal wafted into the home’s air. Someone was enquiring about the payasam.
Six-year-old Riya was sitting at the base of the stairs, silent. Her eyes moved from person to person. Everyone was doing something.
In the front room, Karthika, the oldest of the cousins — was helping Ammamma go through an old trunk, and doing it the way she did everything, calmly, quickly, each item finding a place almost the moment her hands touched it.
“This goes to the top shelf, this one we can give away, this stays” — decisions dropping from her like they cost nothing at all.
In the corner, Vidhu had brought his whole action figure collection in a proper carry case, laying them out on the floor in a straight, satisfied row. “Six of them, I have all six now”, he told anyone who would listen, and someone always did, because his certainty was the kind that pulled people in.
Near the window, Shreya sat cross-legged with a small pile of things from the garden — a curled leaf, a bit of wire she’d found near the gate, a stone with a ring around it — turning each one over slowly, already somewhere else in her head, already seeing what they might become.
And in the kitchen doorway, Nikita Ammayi stood with a cup of tea, watching her own children, Dev and Aami, chase each other around the dining table, talking to Raghu Valyachan about nothing in particular.
Riya watched all of it from the stairs, and felt something tighten in her chest that she didn’t have a word for.
Because when Ammamma had asked her, that very morning, to just pick five toys from her toy box to give to Aami.
Riya had opened her box and looked at everything inside, a red car that would zoom forwards if pulled backwards and released, a rabbit with one eye and floppy ears, a clockwork elephant that shook its head and ran in circles and some others. She hadn’t been able to choose even one.
Not because she loved them all so much.
Not because she had plans for any of them.
Not because they held some memory or story.
She just — couldn’t. Every single thing in the box felt exactly as important as every other thing, and picking meant leaving the rest to feel unimportant, and that felt unbearable, though she couldn’t have said why.
She had closed the box and said nothing, and Ammamma had let it go, and now Riya sat on the stairs watching her cousins each hold their small certainties so easily, and felt something like shame settle over her, heavy and unclear.
Karthika knew what went where.
Vidhu knew exactly what he had and what he was still missing.
Shreya knew what things could become.
Riya knew nothing.
She just had a box she couldn’t open and a chest that felt full even though her hands were empty.
“Riya, kutta, you’re not playing?”, Nikita had noticed her from the kitchen doorway and come to sit on the step below her, cup of tea still in hand.
Riya shrugged.
Nikita didn’t push. She sat quietly for a moment, watching the same room Riya had been watching — Karthika sorting, Vidhu counting, Shreya turning her stone over and over.
“You know,” Nikita said finally, “when I was small, I had three drawers full of things. My mother wanted to clear them once. I couldn’t explain why any of it mattered. I just knew it did.”
Riya looked up at her.
“Did you know why?”, Riya asked.
Nikita smiled a little. “Not really. Not then. Sometimes you don’t know why something matters. You just know that it does, and that’s allowed too.”
Riya was quiet, turning this over slowly, the way she turned everything over, too slowly for her own comfort most days.
“Ammamma asked me to pick five toys,” Riya said in a small voice. “I couldn’t.”
“Five felt like too many to choose from?”
Riya shook her head. “Every one felt too many.”
Nikita nodded slowly, like this made complete sense, which surprised Riya more than anything else that day.
“Okay,” Nikita said. “Let’s not do five. Let’s do one.”
“One?”
“One thing. Just for right now. Not forever. We can do the next one after, whenever you’re ready. Or not even today.”
Riya thought about the box upstairs and for the first time all morning, the thought of it didn’t feel like standing at the edge of something too big to cross.
“The rabbit,” Riya said. “I’ll look at the rabbit.”
“Just the rabbit,” Nikita agreed. “That’s enough for now.”
They went up together, and Riya took the rabbit out and held it, and didn’t have to explain why it stayed, and didn’t have to decide anything about the elephant or car or the others.
Downstairs, Karthika was still sorting, certain as ever. Vidhu was recounting his six figures to Aami, who wasn’t really listening but liked the sound of him talking. Shreya had moved on to a second stone, already imagining it beside the first. Achachan was rumbling with laughter at something Dev said about Ammamma’s silver hair.
None of them knew there had ever been a box Riya couldn’t open.
But Nikita knew. She sat with her niece a little longer, in no hurry for the rabbit to mean anything yet, and let that be enough — for both of them, for now.
❤️
Ann’s Insights
How did you enjoy this story? Of all five characters in this series, Riya is the one I recognize most often in the families I work with.
Riya wasn’t holding on out of love, or fear, or a plan she hadn’t shared yet. She just couldn’t choose. Every single thing in the box felt equally important, and picking one meant making all the others feel less so. That’s not stubbornness. That’s a child who hasn’t had enough practice making decisions for herself.
It’s also worth naming what triggered the freeze: being asked to give away five toys to a younger cousin, without context, without preparation, and in the middle of a busy family gathering. That’s a lot to ask of a young child. When we set an arbitrary number and add a social expectation on top of it, instead of teaching generosity, we end up activating anxiety.
Genuine generosity comes from feeling safe, not from being told to. When children see the adults in their lives model the joy of giving — explaining why they’re ready to let something go, what it felt like to pass it on — they begin to understand that letting go can be a positive experience, not a loss.
What Nikita did so naturally was remove the pressure entirely. Not five toys. Just one. Just for right now. And suddenly Riya could move.
Decision making is a practice, not a personality trait. A few things that help:
Start with one. One item, one question, one moment. The muscle gets stronger with use, not with pressure.
Notice the body. A sigh before talking about something is worth paying attention to. Things worth keeping tend to make us feel lighter. We sit a little taller, lean forward with interest. Things we're ready to release often feel heavier. Our shoulders drop, a quiet sigh escapes before we even realize it.
Model it yourself. Let your child watch you decide. Talk through it out loud — why you’re ready, what the memory was, how it feels to pass something on. That’s the most powerful lesson of all.
Watching Riya choose the rabbit was enough. Meeting them where they are is always the best place to start.
Thank you for following along with this series. Sheeba and I have loved bringing these stories and perspectives to you. We’d love to hear in the comments — which character felt most familiar? Which story stayed with you?
