For Someday

When I was a little girl, I played with my mother's old Barbie dolls.  Their wardrobe was stored in a toy suitcase adorned with the logo for "Skipper," Barbie's counterpart in the 50's. I can still bring to mind that musty scent when I opened the latch. I played with my aunt's old toy horses, and a bunk bed made for dolls.  The beds still say "Ann" on one and "Lynn" on the other, for my mother and her sister. 

I have a hard time letting go of things.  Whenever my mother would want to sort through things in the house, I'd never agree to part with my Barbies, My Little Ponies, and Cabbage Patch Kids. even as a teenager.  My kids might want them someday, I would tell her.

And then I had boys.  Not that they can't play with Barbies, but the ratio of doll-to-superhero play is a little lopsided.  And they have their own toys, rooms upon rooms of them.  I told my mom to just donate my old toys, better understanding now the burden of clutter, the unimportance of "stuff."  She kept some things that they boys might play with, and one day at their house I sat down to play My Little Ponies with Oliver.  I looked at my mom with tears of realization in my eyes.  She understood, too, that I had reached my someday. 

As I write this I'm listening to the pianist George Winston's December album, a CD (and back then, a tape) my sister and I grew up listening to.  I played it over and over again at night when I couldn't sleep; in my room when I was doing homework; and at camp when I was homesick.  I now play it every night in the bathroom between Oliver and Charlie's rooms to help calm them to sleep.  Tonight I read Oliver a book about Bambi that I grew up reading, pulled from a bookshelf that used to house my books.  The scratch-and-sniff pages are still fragrant after over 30 years. 

When I tell Oliver about these things that used to be mine, and now are his, and when I see my boys at my parent's home, running down the same hallways that I did...I understand that it's okay to have trouble letting go of things. In fact, this is the very time to be holding on to.