Take a moment to notice
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There are clear plastic bags on their way to the thrift store.
When they were younger the trips were constant. Clothes flowed through our house.
Stuffies. Stuffed animals were a constant. Go to the fair? Get a stuffy.
Go to a birthday party? Get a stuffy?
Got a new stuffy? Why not celebrate by getting another stuffy.
There were so many stuffies they collectively became the fifth and sixth members of our family.
And I hated them.
They were everywhere and got left everywhere.
There were just way too many of them. They never seemed to end.
We’ve seen fewer coming into the house over the last couple of years.
Those clear plastic bags are filled with stuffies.
And I feel a little sad.
Not in a sentimental anthropomorphic Toy Story kind of way.
I feel sad because although I hated the stuffies, I loved chucking them at my daughter.
We used to spend hours bifting stuffies at each other. They’d be thrown onto beds, into boxes, houses, tents, pillow forts and cribs. They were bombs. They were flying monsters. They brought forth great gales of laughter.
They? The toys?
No. We. The people. Me and my children.
I am sad that I no longer get the chance to lie on the floor and spend hours throwing stuffed animals back and forth with someone.
So, it’s not about the toys, but the games we played.
Things aren't things. They are what they represent to us.
My husband was unpacking the Christmas decorations over the last few days and putting them in place. As I was stirring dinner at the stove, he asked me about the oddest item, a 3 inch girl in a summer dress with an ice cream cone on a string around her neck that she could hold in her hands. There is no ribbon to hang her from the tree. I perch her on a branch. She is obviously not a Christmas ornament by design. She has garnered many WTF looks and shrugged shoulders over the years. My husband is the overtly sentimental one. We all know the significance of the ornaments of his youth. His most treasured ornament is a boy on a wooden coffee stir stick sled his Mom bought for him. When he asked me about the ornament he has touched every year for over 30 years yesterday, I shrugged and said, "She's my Little Boy on a Sled". His eyes got big. He shook his head and placed her in a new place of honour on a shelf where she can see the tree. Mom would have loved that.