Work: The saddest chore in the house

The first time I had to clean out Big E's drawers, when she was a few months old and too big for her doll-size newborn sleepers and onesies, I balked at deciding what should stay and what I could give away.  Battling through lingering post-partum haze, I squelched the piercing sob that crept up the back of my throat by neatly folding every last tiny sweater and little dress, every stained kimono shirt and mismatched sock and packing them all away in a big plastic tote. 

I planned to use every single item again one day and so through careful folding, packing and labeling, I managed to avoid acknowledging that Big E and I were leaving a place to which we'd never return.  She'd never again be a fuzzy-headed, scrunched-up infant and I --for better or worse-- would never again be an awed and anxiety-ridden, sleep-deprived mother in her first weeks on the job. I was covering my ears and singing I-can't-hear-you-I-can't-hear-you to the ticking of the clock. Even at the time, I sort of knew that.

I had to face the futility of it all when Little E was about 6 months old.  Not only did she have drawers stuffed with outgrown clothes of her own, but in the basement I had a hulking fortress of plastic totes stuffed with hand knit sweaters and ratty burp cloths from Big E's babyhood.  I steeled my nerve and tore through it all in a trance, limiting myself to just a few remaining tubs. 

Afterwards, my husband had to drive with me to the yellow donation bin. I couldn't bring myself to be the one to heft up those bags and drop them away for all eternity.  For months after, my face would get hot and my throat would close up every time I thought about those bags that looked like sacks of trash but were really just the most important few years of my life to that point.

Alas, our house is tiny, the girls' dressers are Ikea flimsy, and I had to do some purging this week.

If it were just fleecy sweatpants and flowered dresses, souvenir t-shirts and adjustable waist blue jeans, I could manage.  I would have no problem passing them on to a friend's daughter, giving them up to a little girls whose parents can't afford footy pajamas, or even (if my father's claims about those donation bins are to be believed) allowing them to be cut into rags and sold by the pound for industrial cleanup.

They're not just clothes.  They are seasons, months, minutes of my girls' childhood that we won't see again. Embedded in their worn cotton knit are all the moments that have passed.

I can almost live with losing the important ones, the first day of school dresses and Christmas pajamas, the ones that got plenty of attention, that have been properly appreciated and photographed.  It's the little moments that are really gone. Little E calling me the mommy dog and she's my puppy curling up next to me in my bed while I try to sneak an afternoon nap --who even remembers what she was wearing, but I'm likely tossing it.

The blown moments that I won't get a re-do on kill me, too.  I don't remember which jeans and t-shirt Big E had on when I snapped at her for asking me what was for dinner --unleashing on her anger likely meant for myself-- but I do wish I could go back and take the deep breath I so sorely needed.  The jeans are gone, along with my chance to get that moment right.

It should be a lesson to me, all this angst over the clothes.  But, of course, I won't remember to cherish every second, to behave myself admirably in every minute.  Even if I did, the clothes would still get outgrown and the time would still pass. 

And I would still mourn the loss.

Dream: How I spent my Christmas vacation

I had my annual Boxing Day breakdown at the dinner table this year.

The day after Christmas has often left me feeling deflated, let down after weeks of build-up.  This year, though, my tears sprung from feeling full to bursting with the sweet moments of past couple months and not wanting to pack any of them away.  But we were preparing for a trip to Disney World, my in-laws' Christmas gift to us, and hustling to box and bag up the season before we left.

When my husband told me that he was throwing away the gingerbread house that Big E made at school and that she was fine with it because she could just make another one next year, I got teary.  Next year, I may not get to visit her class on gingerbread house day, may miss the deliberation over where to place the peppermints and how to best simulate smoke from a tootsie roll chimney.  Next year, Little E may not be quite so taken with the three-foot snowman decoration in her daycare's foyer and may not sling her arm around his shoulders everyday and demand I take a picture.  Next year, they'll both be another year older and it breaks my heart.

And that's not all.  Next year, I may not be lucky enough to still have my part-time schedule, may be back to trudging through full-time work.  Even worse, I thought of all of the awful things that I've watched others endure --illness, injury, grief and loss.  Only luck has spared me and my family, but what if next year finds us on the other side?

I would likely not have kind things to say about the woman with the lovely children, idyllic holiday, career satisfaction, wholly untragic life, and all-expenses paid trip to the Happiest Place on Earth, who still finds cause to weep at the dinner table.  Yet there I was: despairing under the weight of my own happiness and good fortune.

I wish I could say that I came to some great realization that allowed me to accept the passage of time, to figure out how to stop looking back with longing and foward with trepidation.  That didn't happen, but our trip did get cancelled by the snowstorm.

And I wish I could say that I at least managed to hold it together about that. 

Dream: Glass Cases

I am a much better curator of memories than I am a liver of moments.

I have been reminded of this a lot over the past few weeks.  I cross state lines to cheer on my college football team and even referenced the school in my daughters' middle names, and yet on the day I graduated I was so happy to leave that I swore I would never go back.  The other night I felt myself tearing up nostalgically at the movie Dumbo as Mrs. Jumbo lovingly inspected her new baby, but I spent Big E's babyhood reduced to a jiggling heap of frustration and anxiety.  This morning at school a group of exchange students from France arrived and I sentimentally recounted to my students my own sophomore year trip to Paris; it wasn't until I was in the parking lot that I remembered how my host family had sent me up to a cold, lonely bedroom to wait for hours before dinner.

Coincidentally, it was during those chilled Gallic hours that I first read (and then re-read) The Catcher in the Rye whose protagonist Holden fixates on the glass-cased dioramas at The American Museum of Natural History.  Fearful of change, he appreciates their static nature.  This is close to the opposite of my need for glass cases, for it is only after things have changed that I can look back fondly at the diorama of days gone by. 

It is not that I never gaze appreciatively on a sweet moment, it is just that my eye is drawn more often to the less dazzling details: the children are whining, the house is a mess, I have a backpack full of grading to do.  Later, in my mental exhibition, I will polish and position it all to its best advantage.  I will see only the golden sunny vacation, the fun-filled playdate, the weekend of lounging with the family. 

Really, that is what I am doing with this blog and probably why I have been enjoying it so much.  I can take an experience, say venting work frustrations on my husband or pouting on a family skating trip and imbue it with sage like observations.  I am no longer a shrew or a party-pooper, I am wise and reflective.  I am Doogie Howser, M.D., without the genius IQ and the bedside manner.

Here is where I should claim some plan to change this aspect of me.  But I don't really think I can do that; it's too deeply ingrained.  I will, however, try not to share my dark vision with those around me.  Beyond that, all I can do is appreciate the gift of an optimist's memory.  It is, after all, the memories that endure.