One of the household tasks I find most unpleasant is dealing with the things the girls have outgrown: Clothes, shoes, toys, etc. I regularly put off sorting through their cast-offs to determine out what to give to friends or others with younger kids, what to donate, what to save for posterity, and what to chuck. (Generating landfill totally stresses me out, but the fact is, charities don’t want a broken plastic recorder, a single flip flop, a painted masterpiece, or a grubby stuffed animal).
The task itself is tedious, but I think the deeper reason I resist it is that it requires spending time with the physical evidence that time is passing, and my children are getting older. That cute sundress Clio wore last summer, that stuffed animal Elsa wanted so badly for Christmas when she was six, those little wooden boxes I bought for them to paint a couple of winters ago, which held random treasures for a while…none of them wanted or practical anymore. Who wants to marinate in the knowledge that their children are turning into adolescents and that they, as parents, are aging, too?
I don’t really miss having babies or toddlers or even young children, per se. In fact, the past couple of years of the girls lives, the age-ten-through-now phase, has been pretty great. They’re funny and perceptive, enthusiastic and giving. And while they do spend a lot more time with their friends or at activities—particularly since they started sixth grade—they’re also still happy to spend time with us.
Clio and I take walks and play cards or cook together. Elsa likes to show me her drawings and have long talks. As annoying as it can be to have to shuttle them places in the car, it’s a great time for conversations.
On a recent drive, Elsa and I were talking about hair color (she wants to dye part of hers blue) and I said that maybe when I’m older, and my hair is all gray, I’ll do some blue or red streaks.
She laughed in a way that I’m pretty sure was 12-year-old for: “Um, yeah, Mom, I don’t really think you could pull that off.” But then she asked if I had any gray. I stretched the hair back from my temple and showed her the stray grays starting to intrude.
“Does that bother you?” she asked.
“Well,” I said, “A little, I guess. But it’s better than the alternative.”
“What’s the alternative?”
“Not living long enough to get gray hair and grow old. Dying young.”
She liked that, but said that she didn’t really like growing up. She’s always been a nostalgic kid, like her mom. And she’s struggling with some existential stuff lately. She misses the carefree oblivion of childhood.
“But it’s better than the alternative, right?” I said.
I reminded her of all the cool things she’s getting to do now that she’s older: Having the independence to walk to friends’ houses or into town on her own, doing clubs and drama, having her own phone and Chromebook. “It would really be a drag if you watched all your friends growing up around you while you stayed a kid.”
She conceded that yes, it would.
And I reminded myself, inwardly, that one of my most important jobs as a parent, from day one, is to guide my kids safely through their childhood and adolescence, preparing them to be independent adults one day.
And yet: A couple of days later, when I saw that Elsa had added her Baby Simba stuffed animal to the “things I want out of my room that I want you to deal with” pile on the stairs to my office (which has sat there for a month) I double checked: “You’re sure you don’t want Baby Simba anymore?”
She shrugged. “I don’t want to get rid of it. I just want to put it up in the attic for a while.”
One of these days I’ll get around to it.
Totally get this. Part of me wonders how having access to all of this cheap and easy digital video will affect us, and the kids. Just messing around, we pulled up some video from five years ago, when the girls were three and a few months old, respectively, and it blew my mind. They were so impossibly tiny and cute. It felt like ages ago; it felt like five minutes ago.
Most of us have hours and hours of video, where our tiny kids from years ago are dancing and singing and babbling. I wonder if having those images and sounds so easily accessible, so permanent–time and light don’t fade the colors–has some impact on how we see or understand the passage of time. Maybe it makes it harder to let go, as we can push the button to watch our kids sing as a two-year-old again.
As the kids grow out of clothing we have always just pulled them out of the closet and brought them to a consignment store need us…or donated to charity. The only sentimental clothing keeps are home from the hospital outfits…maybe a few others.
For toys we have always gone through them each winter, before Chanukah and Christmas, of which we celebrate both, as you know. We pull out all the toys they no longer use and as long as they are not broken, we donate them to Big Brothers Big Sisters.
Recently we cleaned out their books. Some of the books on their shelves are actually from my childhood that I have saved. As we went through all the books, I made sure to point out books they should save, even if they are too old now, because when they are older, they will be ones they will want to pass along. For some reason its books that make me want to keep those items…so much more nostalgia there. I told them they don’t need to keep them on their bookshelves, taking up room…but we won’t get rid of them. For example…my copy of Peter Rabbit from when I was a baby.
One book is about Grover and his visit to the Everything In The Whole Wide World Museum. Not a Pulitzer winner by any stretch, but was one of my favorites… on the the inside cover it says, “This Book Belongs To” and then you see:
Heidi Cohen (complete with hearts over the i’s)
Ellis Miller
Hayden Miller
I love that it went from me, to my son, who then passed it to Hayden. 🙂
I can relate to all of this too well. Lovely post.