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| It's hard to let go of the Little Girl who wore those Little Girl Clothes! |
Isn't it ridiculous that it's even more difficult to clean out her closet than it is mine? With her, the clothes have to go because they don't fit her anymore. Pure and simple. She has gotten bigger, but the clothes have remained the same size.
There is no internal debate about something coming back in style that hasn't been worn in years, or whether she'll get back down into a particular size shirt or jeans. There's just the reflection that her little legs used to be the size her arms are today.
Some of her clothes, she wears until there are holes in the knees. Or they get stained, ripped, shredded, or they just don't hold up well. Those are no-brainers. Away they go. We consider socks consumables in our house. Don't get attached. Their fate is to wind up as dust-cloths or dry-erase board erasers.
But those adorable little clothes. Nothing knots my chest and makes those little water-prickles rare up in my nose like holding up adorable little clothes and realizing that the little girl who used to wear them and ride around on my hip is too big for one-pieces and for carrying now.
I don't think it's really the clothes I have such a hard time cleaning out, come to think of it. They're just clothes. There are certain memories attached to certain pieces that sneak up on me and roll down my cheek whenever I clean out Zoe's closet. But it's seeing the lineup of the little clothes as I pull them out to be folded and put in a bin. It's measuring those clothes against me, remembering how her little head would rest on my shoulder when I held her in those clothes, and where her little feet would fall- on my chest, at my waist, around my waist...
She's just a little more than a foot shorter than I am now. All knees and elbows.
Cleaning out Zoe's closet is so hard for me because with each round of cleaning out, I realize that she's grown farther and farther away from the little tiny baby I brought home from the hospital. I've been a little bit terrified her whole life. When I was pregnant, I told my doctor that I didn't mind that she was overdue, because I knew where she was; I knew she was safe. When she was a newborn, she was attached to me for the first two weeks of her life. I knew where she was. I was terrified, but she was safe. She was right there in my arms. We started letting her "cry it out." We were those people. But she learned to self-console. And I was always listening on the baby monitor. I always had an ear tuned to her bedroom or whichever portable crib she was napping in. I knew where she was. She was safe. Never far from my arms.
Then she started rolling, and crawling and she took her first tentative steps. And she started running. She started climbing. She rode her bike off the living room couch one time when I stepped out of the room to put dinner in the Instant Pot. I started to realize that we were coming to a time when I couldn't keep her safe, even from herself, forever.
She went to school. I love her school. I love everything about it. But I have worries. I have nightmares that wake me up from a sound sleep and send me stumbling to her room in the middle of the night to check on her, to hug her, to kiss her cheeks that aren't so baby-chubby as they used to be. My heart breaks a little bit each day, knowing that there will be hurt and heartache that I won't be able to save her from. I won't be able to fix it for her.
I shouldn't rush to fix it all for her. If I lawn-mow or snow-plow all her troubles away, I am stealing from her the opportunity to learn to deal with pain and heartache and hurt and messy emotions while I'm still here to guide her. It's the "Cry It Out" thing all over again. It was so hard for me to listen to her cry and not go get her. But she learned to console herself. In the end, she was stronger for it.
It's safe to say I probably won't be jettisoning any too-small clothes during these times. And as much as the play-room and it's helter-skelter irks me, I probably won't be making her cull her toys right now, either, because that opens up a whole big can of emotional wormage. We've got to be strong for those types of tasks around here.
Because it isn't the outgrown clothes or toys that bring the tight chest and the tears; it's knowing that even though I feel like the same person who brought her home from the hospital, and I look like the same person who brought her home from the hospital, Zoe has gone through transformation after transformation, As It Should Be, and every morning, I see a new butterfly eating breakfast at my table. It makes my heart so proud, even as it's breaking.
She ain't gettin' any smaller, ya know.
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