If they aren't folded, I can't put them away..... where I can't see them and remember the bodies which were wrapped up in them.... the same sheets and blankets their parents used when they were young.... and those kinds of thoughts have kept them close.
Big Cuter left before dawn on Friday, driving straight through to Marin, with LiLou as his co-pilot and ten hours of podcasts to keep him company. I spent the day with Honey Bunny, savoring every sweet and fetid smelling moment. She and her mom and lots of luggage flew back the next day.
How is it that I miss poopy diapers?
I spent the rest of Saturday with a new Lynda LaPlante police procedural (not the thriller the blurbs on the cover suggest) and getting to Genius in Spelling Bee. I tried to fill the hole Big Cuter's absence made on the couch during the 49'er's game, but my heart really wasn't in it.
Sunday, dedicated to laundry and the collapsing of baby related furniture into neatly, easily storable bags and blankets, passed in a haze of beeping from the laundry room and the steady rain outside. We rarely get a slow, steady rain that was coming down when I woke up and is still coming down as the sun sets.
I'm going out now, to put fertilizer on the lemon tree which has, for some reason, decided to set buds this month. The ground is soft enough to absorb it, and I feel the need to take care of someone... something....
I miss my family. I miss the fullness, when every room had evidence of the people I love. Once we got to a level of chaos that was comfortable in the 4+baby iteration, the addition of the bigger kids and their parents was barely noticeable...... until it was gone.
We were a little less cramped but a lot lonelier.
Then the rest of our houseguests departed for their regular lives and suddenly TBG and I are on our side of the house and there's no one to hold down the other side.
It's unbalanced.
I have been there and experienced this. Parting is such sweet sorrow.
ReplyDeleteThe man knew what he was talking about! How lucky I am to have them in my life and to love them enough to miss them so much.
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And here's the thing, which I know you know---life will never be at that stage again. Those days can be remembered, but life goes on and new days will come.
ReplyDeleteI see the pictures of the grandkids as babies and remember how much work there was when they were here, but poof, it is no longer and now they are big enough to care for every inch and ounce of their own selves when they are with us.
How lucky we were to watch Honey Bunny for two months.... and how delightful it was to spend big kid time with her cousins. It is memorialized in pictures which we'll remember as you do.
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