I’m a sentimental person. When my children were growing up, I had a hard time letting go of their things. It was always an ordeal for me when it came time to weed out their clothing or toys. Eventually, I got rid of most of their old things, but I saved a few things, especially some of their toys, which I still have.
Brett, age 11 mos.
When our children were babies, I always kept two copies of a baby book for each child. I kept one for myself, the second one I planned to give them when they were grown up. I always wished I’d had a baby book of my own.
I was one of those mothers who saved their school papers and made scrapbooks for my children. I saved examples of their handwriting, coloring, drawings, and the stories they wrote for the “Young Author’s Conference”. I wanted my children to be able to look back one day, and remember their childhoods. I saved favorite blankets, stuffed animals, and even sports equipment. I kept all of these special things in an old cedar wardrobe that belonged to my grandmother.
As each child graduated from high school, I made a shadow box with their graduation caps, tassels, and other graduation memorabilia. I hung their graduation shadow boxes on the wall in our hallway–next to the shadow boxes which held their “coming home outfits”. Our hallway was lovingly referred to as “the hall of shame” because it was also lined with various childhood photos of our children!
Cub scouting days...
As each child grew up and left home, they left behind a room filled with discarded “stuff”. Trophies, plaques, high school yearbooks, and more. (Why do our children do this when they flee the nest?) We didn’t need the space, so these things sat in the children’s bedrooms, and collected dust for several years…Then one day Ed and I decided to build another house and downsize. Suddenly I had the dilemma of what to do with a lot of excess stuff!
Finally, I came up with the idea of making memory boxes for each of our grown children. I bought three very large plastic storage containers. Into those containers I put their baby book, childhood scrapbooks, high school yearbooks, graduation shadow boxes, and various other special items that I’d saved for each of them. Then I gave the filled containers to each of our grown children.
My two sons didn’t even bother to look through their containers. They stuck them in storage and forgot about them. I felt a bit sad because they didn’t care about that box of memories that I’d so lovingly collected over the years…but, boys will be boys!
This past weekend our oldest son and his wife spent some time cleaning out their spare bed room, in preparation for their new baby. (The spare room was where Brett had stored his memory box). Brett told me that he took some time to look through his memory box as they were moving it out to the new storage shed. He began telling me about some of the things he’d discovered in his box.
High school basketball days...
It’s been four years since I packed those boxes, and I’d actually forgotten what all I put in them. I enjoyed hearing Brett describe what he discovered in his box. The scrapbook….his green baby blanket…the cub scouts uniform…the letterman jacket…sports clippings from the newspaper….the autographed basketball he won during the 3 point shoot-out contest!
Such fun memories from Brett’s first eighteen years of life…and it still it seems like it was just yesterday to me! Where does the time go?
I believe most everybody that has more than one child has one of those…You know, a child that is just a little out of step with the rest, the one that seems to get into just a little bit more trouble, the one that makes the gray hairs come in your head, the one that causes you sleepless nights…on and on and on…I think you catch my drift.I am blessed to be the mother of three. My middle child is one of those..Gotta’ love him!
