Forgiving my Sister

Memories stick to everything.  A trip down memory lane is only as far away as the back of my closet (and now that I own a house, the back of every closet).  I have always been a pack-rat.  I broke my Winnie-the-Pooh snow-globe when I was eight or nine.  After cleaning up the broken glass and sticky ‘water’ I put the exposed Pooh into a box in my closet.  I wouldn’t put it back on the shelf because then my mom would know I had broken it, but I couldn’t put it in the trash either.  

Some days I get in a cleaning mood, a purging mood.  I dig to the back of the closet, rooting out t-shirts I’ve held onto for a decade because my memory of acquiring it is stronger than my ability to throw it out.  Even when I tell myself I’ll donate it to charity, someone else will find use in it, I inevitably stuff it back into the rubbermaid tote it came from and shrug my shoulders to the voice that tells me nostalgia isn’t a good enough reason.

I am in a cleaning mood.  

We have too much stuff.  My husband even agrees with me, and yet as I pull out his senior year t-shirt (older than mine by the way) and he pulls out my sweatshirt from summer camp 2005 we both shrug, nostalgia winning again.  But no.  I will not succumb.  I have seen Hoarders on TLC.  I have seen houses where empty cleaning bottles and great-grandma’s quilts are given equal billing.  It scares me.  We live in a small, fifties ranch with little storage space and small closets.  With the birth of our daughter and the baby paraphernalia piling up it is beginning to feel (well, has been for a while) claustrophobic.  I don’t need a bigger house, I need less ‘stuff’.

Letting go of Dory was tough.  I felt I was betraying her, driving away in a shiny new Hyundai, named Horatio by the way.  Her one remaining hubcap blinking at me in the dark.  But she’s still swimming, the voice cries.  But for how long?  Will she stop swimming while I’m going 60 on the highway with my 3 month old in the back seat?  No, Dory had to go.  I couldn’t figure out why it was so hard at first; then I realized it was because my parents had given her to me.  She was a present.  I’ve always had trouble getting rid of gifts.  Even when I don’t like them, don’t use them, or break them.  They hang around, gathering dust in the back of a closet, in the bottom of a box.  I know I’ve gotten better, I throw away broken things now.

So I have finally come to a point where I can forgive my sister for getting rid of my brown pants.  I said she could borrow my clothes while I was in England for a year, I did not say she could give them to Goodwill.  She claims I gave them to her; I claim they were merely borrowed.  Perhaps if she hadn’t done that I’d still have them, not in my drawer waiting to be worn but in a rubbermaid tote in the back of my closet waiting to be thrown out.

My Little Girl

I’m sorry if you find this post cliche, but it is what is on my heart at the moment.  Every cliche was once new and fresh; and 

for me these feelings are just that.

“My little girl is getting so big.”  This is my new anthem.  I seem to say it every few minutes.  I look at pictures from the day she was born, note on the boppy where her feet used to be, try to snap the onesie around the bigger size diapers.  She’s only two months old, but my little girl is getting so big.  I know I will say this every month, every year, for the rest of her life but I still can’t stop saying it.  I say it to my husband when he gets home from work, running down the list of happenings from my day: smiles, coos and outfits she can no longer wear.  I say it to my mom as I strap my girl into the car-seat.  I say it to my mother-in-law when I catch her up on the essentials: weight at the latest doctor’s visit, how long she is, that the clothes she sent are still a little big but will fit soon (tomorrow maybe).  I say it to the cashier, the lady in line who asks me what aisle I got her in, the bagger at the grocery store; they all coo and claim how small she looks - but my little girl is getting so big.

My eyes are tearing up as I write this.  I know it’s cliche, I know it’s been said before.  But I want to stop time.  I want to revel here, in this moment.  I don’t want to let this go, not yet.  I don’t want to put away the newborn clothes.  I don’t want to finger the smaller sizes at the store; they will only look smaller and smaller as she grows.  Soon it will be impossible to remember that she was ever that small, and she’s only two months old.

I want to take another picture.  Another picture of her sleeping; arms signaling a touchdown, mouth gently parted, eyelashes dark against her cheek.  I want to take another picture but I know it will end up being just one more in the avalanche of pictures of our first child.  Really it’s the moment I want to capture.  The precious innocents and peace of my daughter sleeping.  The gentle sounds of her breathing, the coziness of her blanket, the cheeks I just want to smother in kisses but I won’t because I feel a cold coming, and I don’t want to wake her.

Is there a moment capturing device?  Something I can peek into when I’ve forgotten that baby smell (the good one, not the diaper one), when she’s fourteen and off to high school, eighteen and off to college.  When I start saying things like “time goes so fast” and “I wish I could shrink her back” like all the well-meaning mothers are saying to me about their daughters.  When I forget these new mom feelings and it starts to be “old hat”.

There really isn’t a conclusion to this.  It will just keep happening at every milestone, every event (big and small).  That sounds so melancholy.  There is joy in these moments, it is not all sadness.  Each milestone is a huge achievement on her part.  She is growing, changing and it is wonderful to watch.