Memories for Sale

There is something about yard sales that always makes me feel a little sad.  I don’t actually know if sad is the proper adjective to use; nostalgic maybe?  Either way, sifting through someone else’s things makes me feel like I’m either invading their privacy, judging their sanity (that is to say, “why in God’s name did you ever own that?!”), or getting a glimpse at who they were at one point or another.  This weekend it was the Doyle’s that were on display in the neighborhood.

I not-so-secretly used to wonder, often aloud and full of scorn, how my parents had acquired so much crap in their house.  Well I ate a big ‘ole slice of humble pie as I recently looked around my own basement and wondered, aloud and wrought with that familiar scorn, how we had accumulated so much of our own shit in the basement of a home we had only inhabited for four years.  My parents had at least taken a good thirty or so years to do their damage but I felt like at the rate we were travelling, I was well on my way to an episode of hoarders.  So, yard sale it was. 

We put out tables and tables of items that had at one time seemed like great little home additions- lamps, framed art or decorative quotes, a yo-nana (the frozen “yogurt” maker-that-uses-bananas-but-I’m-the-only-banana-eater-in-the-house-and-so-it-was-solely-a-dust-collector-investment...don’t you judge us), etc.

We were shocked each time a car drove off with things that we couldn’t imagine anyone would want.  More than that, the mix of people that stopped by entertained us.  I can’t tell you how many well-meaning older ladies commented after seeing some of the baby items we had for sale, “Oh you’re done having babies?”  I wanted to say, “I don’t know but this crap earned its spot on the table because I learned only by trial-and-error how ridiculous that trendy eco-friendly bathtub is and my incredibly overpriced stroller was awful to push and had no shock absorbency and woke my sleeping baby every time I pushed her in it and hit a bump and I am hoping that I can try and recoup my bad investments by making them seem appealing to you!”  Instead I just smiled and said, “For now!” because I may be a lot of things but I am certainly polite above all else.

Kennedy seized our clean out as an opportunity to evoke her executive veto power in regards to selling anything that she had ever laid eyes on.  Seriously, if she touched it at one point in her life we couldn’t sell it.  So we distracted her and kept her busy hocking lemonade at the bottom of the driveway in order to unload a few things we felt she could survive without-we like to live dangerously, Sean and I.  She was a natural, and made, with the help of one Cooper J-code name Gingersnap, $15 over the two days of selling.  Seriously though, the two of them ate it up, as did the people that downed their somewhat cool lemonade on a 90-degree day. 

My little guy made his presence known when our new neighbors stopped by with their two little kids, a little girl wearing an elephant on her shirt, and a little boy…named Holden.  I held it together long enough for them to walk away without giving them the impression the lady down the block is a lunatic, but I still have goosebumps thinking about it.

We broke up the days with some laughs, dips in Kennedy’s little pool, and freeze pops galore. 

So no, it’s not the things themself that make me nostalgic at yard sales but the memories that are attached to them.  Like seeing the little porcelain boy holding McDonald’s fries doesn’t really do it for me in-and-of-itself but it doesn’t take much for me to remember being the 7 year old girl begging her mom to make the three reasonable (HA!) installments of $29.95 after seeing him in a catalogue.  I remember watching my new little peanut sleep in that stroller on the back deck for hours wondering if I was letting her sleep too long and I remember being so excited to find the adorable canvas of a newspaper-hat-wearin’ pirate when I’d decided that would be the theme for Jack’s nursery.  And really when it comes down to it, you’re selling the stuff not the memories not to mention clearing some space to make some new memories.

little baby Kennedy

In a stroke of luck there were no takers for that because I don’t think I was really ready to let it go-and who knows maybe there is a place for him on my office walls next school year.

One last side note: I bought this from my sister for a quarter.  It is a 25 mL beaker that I will now use as a tiny bud vase.  Why did I have to have this you ask?  Well my rule-abiding-at-all-cost sister stole this from our uppity private high school’s science lab.  And that right there, ladies and gents, is a memory I will keep forever.

The First Few Breaths of Summer

I can remember counting down the minutes for summer vacation as a kid and just about hour into it proclaiming to my mom that I was “bored”.  That used to just about kill her, she would eventually get so sick of hearing us say it that she would threaten to give us chores to do so we wouldn’t be “bored” anymore; we would inevitably find something to do in order to avoid that sentence.  And so I would like to pat myself on the back because one week into my summer vacation and I have not been bored a single minute.  In fact, I’m a little tired.  But I’ll take busy, chaotic days with my girl and the people I love over just about anything else. 

We started the week off with a day in the park with one of our littlest buddies where Kennedy did her best to lure Zoe to climb things with her but settled for being able to push her on the swings.  I love to be around these kiddos but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make my heart call out of Jack when I watch her learning to walk and smile those big, beautiful one-year-old smiles. 

Sean left for the annual golf/fishing/man trip that the men in my family take in honor of my grandpa early Thursday morning and so that began a girl’s weekend for Kennedy and me.  It also was her last day of her first year of preschool-and that just about killed me.  As I dropped her off and she hopped out of the car in the drop-off lane and waved and said over her shoulder, “have a good day, Mama,” it dawned on me how fast this year flew and how fast the rest are going to go; so I did what any mother in her right mind does:  I had a good cry as I pulled out of the parking lot and then I called my mom. 

First day of Preschool

Last day of Preschool

After I picked her up my sister and I drove the kids up to Lake George to the Great Escape amusement park for the day.  My sister and I took turns riding with Mason who is still too little to ride the kiddie rides alone, each of us taking one for the team with the nausea in the heat.  I hit a low point as an adult when they wanted to go on this hot-air balloon ride that spun around pretty good because when Kennedy and Cooper got on and got themselves settled in the seat of their choosing I decided to pull rank and proclaim that I needed that seat with Mason so “he didn’t get sick moving backwards.”  They begrudgingly switched and we all got settled in just in time for the ride to start…moving in the opposite direction that I thought it would so that Mason and I were the one riding backwards to which he yelled, “this is fun!” and Auntie Tri held the vomit down as best she could. I lied to children to get my way and Karma took over.  It was a long but fun day that ended with my little lady curling up next to me in bed-something she had been looking forward to doing since we told her Daddy was going away (our bed is a strict no toddlers-unless-your-sick-zone).

Friday was an errands day that we managed to squeeze manicures into.

Yesterday we made our way to the country with my mom where my sister lives and into the local strawberry patch. I seemed to keep finding all of the strawberries that must have had a "little extra genetic material" and maybe its that I look for them subconsciously or maybe it's my little guy's way of reminding me he is with me wherever I go.  We picked, no exaggeration, ten pounds, and headed back to my sister’s for a dip in the pool and to make some homemade jam.  I ate all of that up (seriously, I’m still sticky I think after washing my hands at least a dozen times and showering that night).  I have decided that, like Olivia Pope, I may just live out my days making jam.

Kennedy and I woke up early this morning to clean the house and make some Father’s Day paintings for her grandpa’s, a few guys that make her one lucky little granddaughter, and waited for our favorite guy to come home.  I asked her what she loves about her daddy while she was swinging and quickly switched my phone into video mode and the results were priceless.  She loves when he kisses her, and tickles her, and scares her, and beeps his horn at her.  It’s funny because all of the small things that probably come through so effortlessly are the things she loves about him.  And I know what she means because those are the same kinds of things I love about him too and they are the same kinds of things I love about my own dad too.

 So after a week of enjoyable chaos we will wind down and celebrate the daddies in our lives we loves so much and I will continue to to my best to make sure none of use are "bored" this summer.

Oh and I have traffic court tomorrow- which my own daddy will be driving me to.  Oh to be a father…

Falling

October has always been my favorite month.  It is when the heat that has kept me sweating for months finally lets up and allows for some cool air to settle in and change the leaves into something magical.  Everything starts to change; my clothes, coffee and donut flavor offerings and of course the leaves.  If I was in my fifties or sixties, had spare weekends, and passengers in my car that would ask me every 10 minutes where we were going I would totally be what we, in the northeast, affectionately call a “leaf peeper”.  Alas, none of these are true for me and so I must settle for oohing and ahhing out the car window while my poor colorblind husband can’t see what all the fuss is about.  I think what I loved most about fall is that it’s as if the leaves changing are the trees last attempt to show us all they still have something beautiful to offer though they will shed the best part of themselves.  

My grandfather passed away on October 15^th sixteen years ago and so that day has been a tough one since.  October has come to be a month of significance for me in ways that weren’t relevant to me of the people in my life until recently.  This year I learned October 15^th is also Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Day only a few days after I buried my son.  I felt so sad that this was a day I had never known about, but now would never overlook; a day that, for so many men and women, is a rare opportunity to say to the world: We had a baby, even if they aren’t here with us, they were for a time.   The month of October is also Down syndrome Awareness month.  I have done my best to help spread some love for people rockin’ an extra chromosome but in the sad corners of my heart it seems so painful and ironic to me.  I should have my baby in my arms and doing my best to learn as much about his diagnosis as I could be for both him and the rest of the people in my life, and instead I am observing a day dedicated to babies that have passed away and it’s just all wrong.

Last Thursday, Sean, Kennedy, and I did have the chance to do something amazing in Jack’s memory.  We found out about a local organization that was recently started, called The Ohana Foundation.  A young couple that had lost their son earlier this year as well created it to help, financially and emotionally, other families going through the same thing.  Our sons died only about one month apart.  I remember feeling so hopeless as I looked for support in our area for people going through what we were going through and finding nothing and it seems this young woman felt the same.  The organization hosted a short ceremony to memorialize the babies that left this earth long before their families.  It was a memory lantern ceremony.  It was beautiful.  It was heartbreaking.  It allowed Kennedy to send a light up to her baby brother and “his friends” as a way to say, “I still talk about you.  I still think about you.  We miss you.”  This little girl that, though she never had a chance to meet him, still calls her brother Jackie, waved to the lights that seemed to float to the heavens.  It was everything Sean and I needed that day. 

We watched my nephews this past weekend too.  It was equal parts fun and exhausting.  I got my Mason cuddles in, and I swear the boy knows I need them.  Cooper, my little ginger snap, knows how to smile and melt your heart.  And Kennedy always takes these opportunities to assert her “leadership skills”, reminding both boys she was watching them.  Everyone survived and some fall fun was had, even if it was much chillier than fall would imply.

So I am doing my best to embrace this fall, October most of all.  It is the last month I have before the holidays roll in, before the winter rolls in.  It is a chance for me to show the world that I, too, have something beautiful left to offer, even after I’ve lost one of the best parts of myself.

“And the tree loved the little boy, even more than she loved herself.”

                                                                                -The Giving Tree