I'm shedding a couple of tears this week. As I type, I'm selling off all the itty bitty baby gear in a garage sale. I am no longer really attached to stuff (my mom is laughing right now because I used to be a first class pack rat), and often tell the story about how I threw away entire unopened boxes when we moved from our old house. Stuff, in my opinion, weighs you down and doesn't allow you to move forward.
But this stuff that is surrounding me right now with price stickers on it, this is the last six years of my life. I am looking at the chair that our first child, Brady (who died of SIDS in 2005) played in. I remember watching her learn to reach and react with joy when she touched a toy and it made a sound. I had that memory each time my other three sat in that chair for the first time. The human cannonball jumped for hours in the Jumparoo. Some days I wish there could be a bigger version. It would be nice to keep his jumping contained. When the twins came along, we borrowed another Jumparoo, and the Twinstroms would jump side by side and giggle away the hours. Now, that Jumparoo is going for $40 (I think I priced it with my emotions, I can be negotiated with).
The hardest part, of course, is the clothes. Folding each piece of clothing and remembering when each of my babies wore it. The hardest of all were the clothes that my first daughter wore, and now my last daughter has worn. This ritual cleaning out of the baby stuff is a rite of passage for a mother. Dare I say that it is part of the grieving process when you have decided that your childbearing years are behind you. Six years worth of life as I have known it, is in my garage waiting for a new home. Thankfully, my memories aren't for sale. All this stuff has a cameo in my memories, but the real memories are locked up safe and I get to keep them forever. I am happy to sell it off to someone else, so it can have a role in the memories they will create.
How have you said goodbye to the baby years? What did your ritual cleaning out rite of passage look like?
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Now that Sadie and Davis are 2.5, there's not much "baby" left in them. I'll never have another baby, so sometimes it's emotional to purge our house of the teeny tiny stuff. I'd probably keep it all forever if my husband wasn't such a compulsive organizer. If I'm not quick enough to donate it, he'll put it in the garbage. Makes it a little easier to say goodbye to those little years, I guess:)
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