Mommy Memories

Well, I bit the bullet and decided to sort out two very large drawers full of my children's memorabilia. I had been tossing into those drawers for years all of their school artwork and papers, birthday cards, and miscellaneous school pictures and souvenirs. I decided to buy some storage boxes and so I set out to sort and separate each child's things. There was nothing efficient about the process. I became bogged down on memory lane. The kids went to a little country school that required them to journal from the time they were able to put pencil to paper. They didn't always like it but, those journals are golden. They are the time capsules that capture the moments of our lives. Blair describes, with typical efficiency, his weekends around the farm. "I helped my dad. I watched 'Home Improvement' and then I went to bed." Amanda, being the wordier child, goes into great detail about spending the night with her best friend, Michelle. There are the little projects about themselves "All About Me" that describe favorite foods and friends. My favorite finds were the little notes that Amanda used to leave around the house ... 'Dear Mom, Can you make me a side pony in the morning. I am not showing off, I just want something different." Leave it to my girl to overthink a ponytail. And, don't even get me started about the letters to Santa that I found. So sweet, so hopeful, so trusting. Yesterday was a day of smiles and a few little sniffles and tears over the fact that the time was so fleeting. I can hardly believe that those days are gone so quickly and that they are now setting up households of their own. I want them to have these things so that they know how special those times were for me and so that they can one day show their own children that they too were little once. But mostly, I want them to have the record of a life lived happily.