Should I throw Favorite Baby in the trash?
Downsizing children’s things may be the hardest of all.
When I was about three, I had a doll: the Danny-doll. It was my favorite, even after it disintegrated and became a disembodied head. My mother knew better than to pry the Danny-doll, or rather the Danny-head, from my sticky grasp.
Three decades later came Favorite Baby – so named because she was, for no obvious reason, my daughter’s preferred doll. Her head was still attached to her neck, but her fabric body was torn and filthy and her plastic features a queasy shade of pink.
It’s been more than a decade since our grown daughter has lived under our roof. Yet Favorite Baby is still here, staring accusingly at me from atop a heap of unwanted junk to be thrown or given away.
What the heck should I do with it? The neighborhood Buy Nothing list is my usual recourse for giveaways of minimal value, but this doll is altogether too revolting to pass on to anyone else’s child.
All right, I know what I have to do. Say no more. But what about all the other reminders of my daughter’s childhood that have surfaced in our downsizing? Artwork bursting with hearts and rainbows, a bin of schoolwork in binders, and, of course, clothes. There’s the tiny baby sweater that my mother knit for her first grandchild. The Babar T-shirt that a friend hand-painted. The dresses my daughter wore on the first day of pre-K and on stage for the kindergarten holiday sing.
Fortunately, children’s clothing in good condition can be passed on, and I’ve already given away most of these items. That’s after offering them to my daughter and getting a big fat “no” along with some remarks along the lines of “You made me wear that?”
For children’s artwork and elementary school homework, on the other hand, the recycle bin is the only option. I’ve put a few things in scrapbooks and taken pictures of some others before tossing them.
Why is all this so hard? One can say “the memories,” but that seems too easy. It’s more a sense of time passing, renewed awareness of a stage of life that is unrecoverable. Not that I’d want to go back to parenting a toddler, thank you very much. And I love having a daughter who’s an adult. But holding the painting or the tiny sweater in my hands reminds me of what is gone and can never return.
I vote for keeping Favorite Baby Doll ... or one tangible thing to love. So dear, Cathy!
Yeah, hanging on is for he parent, not the child. I kept my boys' stuffed animals for decades too, then took the easy-out by passing them on to the kids. They may be growing mold in an attic; they may have made a nice nest for mice, who knows?