Another summer has ended. The kids have had adventures, learnt new things, met new people, even found new and improved ways to enrage their parents. They’ve also grown older. My daughter is starting kindergarten and my son has just started leaping from his crib, so it’s time to update their room. We’ve decided on a bunk bed, but when I equip my husband with a measuring tape and follow him into their room, his shoulders begin to shake as he is overcome by the crippling tears of a man who has never been able to accept the audacity of the passing of time and its effect on our children. This is a job for me. I gently lead my weeping husband out and tell him that I’ll handle the inevitability of our children maturing.
Right. Here we go. I measure where the bed will go. Space will now be limited, so in lieu of buying new furniture for their things, we could get rid of some of them. This should be easy enough, I foolishly tell myself, not yet knowing the raw emotional journey this project will set me on.
I sit on the floor and begin going through books. Board books will be easy to purge I think, seeing as my kids have definitely outgrown them. I never would have thought that maybe I had not. I manage to put aside the ones in pristine condition, the ones that have obviously never been loved enough to chew or drool on. Then I find the torn ones. It’s hard for chubby little hands to tear up a board book, so I know that these have seen some unparalleled toddler action. These are the ones I used to read to them in the throes of sleep deprivation, the ones that would fill me with dread when I saw them. But now that my babies are older, that feeling has softened to wistfulness. Where has the time gone? OK, so maybe books later.