The Things We Buy On Vacation

If you didn’t bring something home, did you actually go?

Traditions are nothing more than codified habits, developed over time. Eating Thanksgiving dinner with friends instead of your family happens once, then again, then five years later, you’re sending Paperless Posts the day after Halloween, requesting appetizers and gently enforcing your plus one policy. The vacation magnet starts off as a hungover airport purchase, bleary-eyed and slapped on the fridge in triumph and ends as the kind of thing that you simply cannot forget.

On vacation, money feels like an abstract concept, something to spent with reckless abandon. Yes, I’ll have another wine and please, dessert sounds good, too. That artisanal jam I bought from the side of the road might be eaten the minute I get home, spread thickly on crackers with chunks of cheese or it will linger in the back of my fridge, next to a Tupperware full of roasted tomatoes that I made, forgot about and remembered only when something started to smell funny. The spoils of vacation are purchased as a way to remember the vacation because experiences are ephemeral but a sweatshirt that cost $40 and was purchased from a stand after morning beers that turned into afternoon wines is decidedly not.

My sisters and I started buying each other magnets every time we go on vacation without each other, even though magnets are precisely the kind of thing you’d want to clear out of your house. They’re the best souvenir because they’re low-stakes and high rewards. Everyone loves a magnet, even those monsters that keep a meticulously-spare refrigerator door clear of anything except the occasional save the date. You need something to hold that save the date to your fridge, pal, and that very thing is a souvenir magnet you purchased for $5.99 at the airport in Miami on your way home from a trip.

Memory is faulty, but a magnet of a horse wearing a Hawaiian shirt and betting on the race from the Louisville airport means that someone thought of you on their travels and felt it kind to bring a little something back. Much more useful than a postcard and infinitely more enjoyable, magnets are the best embodiment of the experience. There’s something nice about a fridge covered in magnets — it telegraphs a hint of Grey Gardens with a dash of a life lived in full. Stuff! If it makes you happy, go with it.

Recently, my sister got back from a weekend in New Orleans and upon her return, threw a crinkled paper bag on the dining room table. “I got us a really good magnet,” she said. “I think it’s the best one yet.”

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