Double Down

This January I am feeling like cleaning house.  Getting a new start with the new year.  So much of the past two years has been so foggy and muddled and lost, and while I can’t get the years back, I look around and see places I can simplify.  Streamline. Start something.

The challenge with this, that has dogged me for years but is more pronounced now than ever, is that to clean house (literally) I am grieving not only the loss of Andra, but the loss of little kids.  Its twice as sad.  I have mentioned before that it is hard to connect the first 12 years of parenting with today.  But as Grace is growing up, it is more poignant.

When Andra was 12, she cleaned her room.  Out with the stuffed animals.  The dolls.  Little kid toys.  Then, we just moved them all across the hall to Grace’s room.  Now, Grace is 12.  All that stuff is moving right back across the hall. 

We can’t keep everything.  We have to let someone else love some of our stuff.  But going through all the stuff reminds me of such happy times, such wonderful adventures and such hopeful times.  It reminds me of little kids.

We just got back from the beach.  No one asked for an inflatable whale.  Instead, we got henna tatoos.  This Christmas there weren’t games or toys under the tree – there was makeup, and perfume and clothes.  This growing up is normal.  This change is normal.  This should be happening.  If Andra were here, it would still be happening. But having the loss of Andra over it all, makes mourning the loss of little kids larger.

Cleaning out the linen closet comes with the pom poms and pipecleaners and random craft stuff no one will use again.  It comes with crayons, little girl hair pretties, secret notebooks filled with bad spelling – all remnants of a great childhood.  The problem, is that now that I know that is all it was destined to be, it makes the new start that much harder.

Start I must.  Let go a little, I will.  I resolve to double down my efforts to invest the emotion I felt in the past, back into our future. I will secret away some of the little kid stuff, because I can.   Some of it, however, I need to release to the past and accept as part of growing. 

Wiser. Taller.  Older.  Up.

All good things.

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