Last night I was going thru our storage down in the basement with the goal of getting rid of some of my "stuff". We've started this whole "put it in a garage sale" phase and I was on a roll last night. Now, mind you, I've moved 3 times in the last 3 years and there are boxes that I chose to just move instead of going thru them and pitching what needed to be trashed. And that all stopped last night. It's a more massive nightmare than I had originally anticipated. Waaaaay more massive.
I blame my mom and BEING a mom with this whole problem. After I lost my mom when I was younger (15) I wanted to save every single thing that reminded me of her. I feared that if I threw away something that had a memory of her attached to it, I'd begin to forget about her. I'd forget the smell of her skin, the way her eyes would light up when she'd smile, the sound of her laughter, or the way she made her j's when she'd write. So I saved everything.
And when I became a mom....well, let's just say it had a violent shove into overdrive. I have 3 boxes of Taylor's school papers from preschool, kindergarten, and 1st grade. 3. What on earth do I need 3 boxes of that stuff for???! I saved every coloring book, every doodle, every time she tried to write her name and every napkin I traced her hand on. You name it, I saved it. I wanted to preserve her being my little girl....so when I pulled all these papers out years and eons from now (which was then), I'd remember how her dimples were deeper than her eyesockets, and how her toothless smile made her s's and f's sound funny, and how she used to say "juice bosk" instead of 'juice box', or "yogrit" instead of 'yogurt'. So....again....I saved everything.
So, back to last night.... I was doing a pretty good job of consolidating things I could bare to part with, things that we had duplicates of, and things we just simply do not use. I had a pretty good pile going when I pulled out a square flat box that read 'girls clothes' and the word 'save' written on it. I opened it and found this:
And my heart melted with the memory of Taylor in these red shoes.
One of my best friends, Martha, bought them for her before a trip to Chuck E. Cheese one afternoon. Martha was the best aunt to Taylor when she was little (not that she's not now). She'd call on Friday nights and ask if Taylor could spend the night with her. Martha and my other best friend, Heather, had a bond with Taylor beyond anything I could ever put into words. They taught her words to N'Sync songs and how to dance to Fifty Cent. They'd take her shopping and buy her sparkly belts and cute shoes.
Taylor wore these shoes continuously. And by that, I mean she even wore them to bed. The instant she got out of the bathtub she'd put them on. Even if they didn't match her outfit, she had to have these shoes on. She wore them to the point where they had no tread on the bottoms....you could even see where her little toes were. They are permanenty curled and the rubber is pulling away from the canvas. I bet I bought 6 pairs of shoestrings for this poor pair of shoes. I knew it was finally time to retire them when she couldn't walk normal. Her toes were so smashed in the ends of them that she went from walking heel-to-toe to more of a waddle. She refused to give those shoes up.
And for the first time, what I wanted to happen when I opened one of these boxes....when I saved something that was going to remind me of my past.....did just that. 7 years later....
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