I am packing up their things, preparing for remodeling and switching of rooms. Some things are easily thrown in a bag for donation, garbage... the random McDonalds' toys, plastic and tacky and resplendent in their blatant gare, Walmart brand button ups, in 1997's plaid, the errant pieces to a puzzle long since solved and tossed.
But then I come upon the treasures, the pieces I never even began to fantasize about in 3rd grade, when the dreams of babies began to creep into my mind. The American girl Bitty Baby, rife with accessories, and outfits, lace and pastels. The Eric Carle slippers, shaped like one Hungry Caterpillar, the tiny porcelain teat set, meant for a budding princess, but wasted on a wild three year old boy with sticky, lustful fingers. I touch each of these things, remembering birthdays and Christmases past, when paper was frantically torn, and voices enthusiastically embraced each piece. I think of pigtails and Thomas the Train pjs, and bold lights on a tree clinging to its last legs. I remember a time when time seemed to last forever, when there was never anything but the moment.
With these few un-tossable souvenirs of my children's youths, I carefully place them in tupperware bins with the inscription "for my grandchildren".
I think about the things I will do when my children have offspring. How, like my mom and dad, I will be an even better grandparent than a parent, spoiling at every turn, relishing every moment. How I will have a room for the granddaughters, with canopies and babies and pinks, and the grandsons with legos and bolds, and heroes. I imagine my grandbabies, and their parents at Sunday and Holiday dinners, bringing voices to an otherwise quiet world, memories and laughter spilling over like a brimming cup of hot cocoa. I see the Dan in Real Life, with arguing but agreeable siblings, and cousins whose very summer should equate other cousins. I see myself righting my thus far wrongs, the yelling absent, the punishments a late-night-over-wine joke among my children.
I am vacuuming up tiny beads of what looks like styrofoam peanuts and Barbie limbs and hair, and the twins are giggling uproariously at a half-working metal detector, while the girls fuss over a book that has gathered dust for months, and the middle child debates his new lego shrine, when the reality of it all hits me.
They will be those grown children before I can blink, stressing about mortgage and marriage. They will coast through high school, and colleges, forgetting their roots until their own children spring into the world with a bouncy step. And while I am packing their tupperware and fantasizing about grandbabies for pancakes, they are tiny and ever-needing before me. The American Girls, and Indiana Jones and Robert Munsch are alive and well and i am overlooking them.
I abandon my fantasies of future perfection, and wipe snot from a nose or two, and holler about misplaced shoes, and rub the back of a weepy child. Every moment lays before me like a train track... neverending in its finiteness. And while the chug of the train rings in my ears, I grasp each moment like a wish, and breathe it in.
But then I come upon the treasures, the pieces I never even began to fantasize about in 3rd grade, when the dreams of babies began to creep into my mind. The American girl Bitty Baby, rife with accessories, and outfits, lace and pastels. The Eric Carle slippers, shaped like one Hungry Caterpillar, the tiny porcelain teat set, meant for a budding princess, but wasted on a wild three year old boy with sticky, lustful fingers. I touch each of these things, remembering birthdays and Christmases past, when paper was frantically torn, and voices enthusiastically embraced each piece. I think of pigtails and Thomas the Train pjs, and bold lights on a tree clinging to its last legs. I remember a time when time seemed to last forever, when there was never anything but the moment.
With these few un-tossable souvenirs of my children's youths, I carefully place them in tupperware bins with the inscription "for my grandchildren".
I think about the things I will do when my children have offspring. How, like my mom and dad, I will be an even better grandparent than a parent, spoiling at every turn, relishing every moment. How I will have a room for the granddaughters, with canopies and babies and pinks, and the grandsons with legos and bolds, and heroes. I imagine my grandbabies, and their parents at Sunday and Holiday dinners, bringing voices to an otherwise quiet world, memories and laughter spilling over like a brimming cup of hot cocoa. I see the Dan in Real Life, with arguing but agreeable siblings, and cousins whose very summer should equate other cousins. I see myself righting my thus far wrongs, the yelling absent, the punishments a late-night-over-wine joke among my children.
I am vacuuming up tiny beads of what looks like styrofoam peanuts and Barbie limbs and hair, and the twins are giggling uproariously at a half-working metal detector, while the girls fuss over a book that has gathered dust for months, and the middle child debates his new lego shrine, when the reality of it all hits me.
They will be those grown children before I can blink, stressing about mortgage and marriage. They will coast through high school, and colleges, forgetting their roots until their own children spring into the world with a bouncy step. And while I am packing their tupperware and fantasizing about grandbabies for pancakes, they are tiny and ever-needing before me. The American Girls, and Indiana Jones and Robert Munsch are alive and well and i am overlooking them.
I abandon my fantasies of future perfection, and wipe snot from a nose or two, and holler about misplaced shoes, and rub the back of a weepy child. Every moment lays before me like a train track... neverending in its finiteness. And while the chug of the train rings in my ears, I grasp each moment like a wish, and breathe it in.
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