Last week the weather finally started to cool down in Knoxville. In true Tennessee fashion, it was actually 100F degrees one day, and within 24 hours suddenly the high temperature for the day was only 60F degrees. I am a mom of two girls, ages two and three, so sharing clothes is a given, and at the beginning of summer this year I decided to take a new approach to how I organized my girls’ clothes when it was time to change seasons. Because of this, when the temperatures suddenly dropped, I was quickly able to grab the tub of fall/winter clothes from the top of the closet, rummage through it to find a pair of leggings and a sweatshirt, and leave it there for the next 5-10 business days until I found time to organize our lives again.
This past Monday I got my girls to school and came home to tackle the job of changing out our wardrobe for the season. I started taking clothes off hangers and separating them into piles. That’s when I got to one of my favorite shirts that my oldest had worn a couple summers ago, and my youngest wore this past summer. I held the shirt up and was overcome with emotion because it was time to put this shirt in the donate pile. How had this happened? Memories in my head started popping up. I remembered seeing this shirt in the store and trying to talk myself out of buying it because a new shirt was the LAST thing my daughter needed. I remember her wearing it to a birthday party, then my youngest wearing it to dinner at the beach. So, there I stood, clinging to a shirt and sobbing like a crazy person because it wasn’t making the cut to go into the bin to keep for next year.
Once I was able to compose myself, I started thinking about the “seasons” of life.
For as many shirts as I put into the donate pile, there were just as many that were saved for next summer. You know how it feels when summer is ending? You’re kind of sad that the pool days and beach vacations are over, but you’re looking forward to pumpkin flavored everything and cozy nights by a fire. Then as spring starts to end, here comes summer again, and you get excited about the warmer temperatures and new trips you will take that year and the memories you will create.
I think motherhood is a lot like that.
We are in the trenches every day and then suddenly we look up and our crawler is walking, or our baby who used to babble words is signing “Let it Go” for the 400th time spinning around in her princess dress. I started thinking that as sad as it is that there will be a last time to wear a shirt, or read a book, or hold them as you walk them into daycare, that there will be just as many new memories, like prom dresses and magazine subscriptions and sending them off to college. We get so caught up in savoring every last memory and stage that we can, but when those are gone it seems like the new memories are just as beautiful and exciting.
