“Rain drops on roses and whiskers on kittens, bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, brown paper packages tied up with strings, these are a few of my favorite things.”
The Sound of Music is a childhood favorite of my husband’s, bringing back warm memories of his mother, so this song gets stuck in my head often. When I was in high school, (giving away my age here but) before the days of text messages, my friends and I used to write notes back and forth more religiously than we completed our homework. They were elaborately folded or sometimes cradled in their own special notebooks that we passed back and forth. One such notebook contained a list of our favorite things. The only one I really remember was my friend Sarah’s love for the smell of Bradford Pear trees. If you’re not from the South, where Bradfords commonly dwell, they have beautiful blossoms that tend to smell like walking into a fish market on a warm day. Not everyone’s warm and fuzzy. But something about them is a favorite to someone! And every so often something happens or my kids do something and I just smile and think, “I love that. I want to remember that. When I am old and grey, I will miss that.”
Last month we had a string of warm Spring days and we decided to go ahead and break out the backyard pool that Addie received for her 3rd birthday from Grayson. It was a bit chilly when the wind picked up, but they had so much fun. And Ella, being a bald-headed beauty, needed a little sunscreen on her peach fuzz to keep the sun away. When the afternoon was done and I carried them inside, I kissed the top of Ella’s head and breathed in that warm baby hair mixed with sunscreen and dirt and fresh air and was in heaven. She smelled like a tropical island. When Addie was a baldy, I did the same thing. I smelled the top of her head all day long, especially on those summer days. And that is one of my favorite things. If I could bottle it up I would. When their hair grows long, it’s not the same. Sometimes when one of those things catch my attention, my mind just spirals into ALL the things I want to remember. Fat baby toes, gummy smiles before teeth come in, the tiny little hairs all over baby faces. How do you save it all? How do you keep all of those little treasures for a rainy day when your house is empty? As someone who is forgetful in nature, this is something I think about almost constantly.
Whenever we get together for holidays, now that I have babies of my own, my grandmother and aunts and even my parents watch them play and it stirs up memories of raising babies for them. And I hear a lot of the same ones over and over, can anyone else relate? But it’s just how things stick with you. Some memories you always remember, and some you may laugh until you cry at the time, but it goes forgotten. My oldest has a new affinity for bugs and it has been an ever preset part of our days. In my spare time I find myself looking up which caterpillars can sting and weather centipedes are bad to hold, because these are things I need to know now. In the morning, we look for bugs. In the afternoon, we look for bugs and lizards. At night, we catch fireflies, and the first time we took her out to catch fireflies is one of those I always want to remember.
I walked outside after sunset on a warm May night and noticed the treeline behind our house was just lit up with fireflies. I mean it was mesmerizing, like a distant lightning storm or seeing the first Christmas lights. And it was only May! Didn’t fireflies usually come out in the summer? I was amazed. I grabbed my husband and my oldest (the youngest was already in bed) and dragged them outside. Then the three of us ran around trying to catch hands-down the biggest, fastest lightning bugs I’ve ever seen. We caught two, and were trying to find one more as they drifted into our yard from the trees. Addie and I were standing together, looking, when all of a sudden my husband comes speeding up behind us and basically pounces on the ground, trying to catch another firefly which, to his surprise, was the jar. Addie and I were cracking UP and inside I was just beaming with how hard her dad was trying to collect bugs for her, all the while feeling like a little kid myself. It was a great memory. It was a great day. And it warmed my heart to watch her go to sleep with a jar of fireflies by her bed as a nightlight. Even if there were only two in there.
All of these little memories I want to remember. I know it’s not possible, but every time someone tells me my kids will grow up before my eyes and I will wonder what happened, I just want to scream “No!” These feel like the best years, and I want to be able to tell them these stories when they are older, even if they roll their eyes at me the whole time. One of the best little gifts I have gotten for myself are Line A Day memory books. The ones I picked out for my girls capture 5 years of memories, one line a day. I’ll admit, it’s sometimes a challenge to keep up with, and I am currently a little behind. Sometimes at the end of a long day I don’t remember to write in them before I crawl in bed, so I text myself a memory that I can write in later. When I decided to get them, it was because I wanted to catalog all of those cute little things. Not just for me and my husband, but for my kids. There is something about me as a mom that just really wants to capture the years of my kid’s lives that they won’t remember. These tiny years are SO SPECIAL, and everything is new and exciting, and they won’t remember much, so I just have this urge to help them remember one day. Maybe I will gift these books on their wedding day, or when they have their first baby, or maybe I won’t be able to part with them at all!
How do you keep up with childhood memories? I’d love to hear what other parents do!
XOXO, Elizabeth & Kate
PARKS & COFFEE 