I did something tonight that I've never done.
Tonight I packed away my babies burp cloths for the last time.
Oh, I've packed them away before. But tonight was different. Tonight I knew I would not take them out and use them again.
It seems a small thing, to pack away stained and dirty cloths. But as I began folding them a sadness I've never felt before rolled in. I took each one and smoothed out the wrinkles, my hands caressing the yellow stains. I brought them to my face and felt them & smelled them. Then one by one I put them in a box.
Is it weird that I feel so sentimental about some 9-year-old rags? Maybe. But as they went into the box I remembered. Four years. Four entire years of my life have been spent with one of those rags over my shoulder. A year for each of my children. Nursing. Wiping their faces. Patting and bouncing them on my shoulder. Morning, day, and night. Each child has added their stains to those icky old cloths. Each child has fallen asleep on those cloths, chewed on those cloths, and burped on those cloths.
A younger version of myself could not wait to pack them away and be done with them for a while. Mother of a one-year-old boy with so many better things to do than clean up baby spit up. Eager for the next phase. Eager for them to grow.
Perhaps I will pass them on and some new, young mother will use them to wipe her sweet newborn's face. Perhaps she will wrinkle her nose in disgust and throw them away. After all, who would want a dirty old rag?
But it was not some dirty old rags that I tucked away in some box.
Tonight, I tucked away my babes.
3 comments:
And then you become a Grami and watch your babes with their very own babes and you realize that you did it alright. Not All Right but by God's grace you got enough of it right that they are raising their own to love the Lord and loving their children and packing away their precious memories and it goes on and on as God intended it too. Each phase of life in of necessity both an end and a beginning. Life is a circle. And I am not trying to get all "Lion King" on you. It all just circles back around to God. He is at the beginning, in the middle and at the end, all at the same time. Never changing. Just there. Complete!
Hugs.
Enough to make a mama's heart break... not looking forward to this.
It is a bittersweet thing. So sad that the "baby" part is coming to and end but very excited for the next phase as well. I console myself with the fact that they'll continue to grow even if I never stop having more. I will never have the same baby twice! Each one comes to the point of no longer being a baby.
But there is something about that last one...
I guess it's just the change. I have never dealt well with it. I cry right before every baby is born because of the change I know it will bring. ;)
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