The process was 85% freeing, 15% sentimental. It helped that I had claimed one set of boxes, our books, as untouchable. Those are the hours upon hours I spent with my babies. All the rest was just furniture and clothes, and it was time somebody got some use out of it after it sat dormant for years. I was fine until we opened one box. It was the box with the bear towel.
When they were tiny babies, we wrapped the girls up after their baths into this towel that has a hood on it like a bear face. They have similar ones now; they're just much bigger ones. It's not that big of deal. Except I saw it, and I saw how tiny they once were and that my babies aren't babies any more. And I remembered: that's when I started calling them "little bears." The name remains, many years later.
The bear towel was tough to let go of, and so was the collage of coaching pictures. Or perhaps the idea of it was. For many years, a framed shadow box of action photos of my basketball head coaching career put together by my sister donned one corner of our dining room wall. That came down this week as well. It was time. That period of my life is done, or on sabbatical at the very least, and the targets for my focus and energies has shifted. Down with the old, up with the new: a framed map of Steinbeck Country given to me by a friend who just visited the National Steinbeck Center now offers perspective on who I am and what I do.
As the old wall art has been replaced, and the old furnishings jettisoned, so too must I let go of the past. By nature, I'm sentimental about the passage of time and am keenly aware of losing what's in front of me as it's happening. I feel it deeply, often experiencing what should be appreciation of something great with a mix of foreboding squirrelled away in my gut.
But as always, losing the old makes room for the new. My babies are no longer babies, but if they were, they would not have enjoyed a trip to the Wisconsin Dells this summer, or camping, or the zoo, or any of the other places we've taken them. I wouldn't be experiencing the joy of listening to Elise read to me now. There would be no art classes and soccer games, no two way conversations at the breakfast table, no one else to wrestle our yellow lab. And I am no longer coaching; but if I were, I would not have been home for a picnic on Father's Day. I would not be editing a website of teacher writing. I would not have been on many of those morning bike rides with the girls this summer.
I still think about the past, and that won't change. On many days I still long for the simplicity of Sutherland, Nebraska and the two years we spent there. I find myself occasionally wishing for the time when my friend Steve didn't live hundreds of miles away, or my friend Chad didn't live several oceans away. And while I'm down to thinking about it for several minutes each day rather than several hours, I can't get out of my head the coach within me.
As much as I don't want to get sucked into a love affair with what's past, sentiment is part of the equation, I've come to believe. To recognize all the good gone by is hard evidence of a life well-lived. But today must be lived as well.
Summer is ending for me once again, and once again I feel deeply what I am losing. I clutch tightly to today, to casual breakfast conversations, to cuddles and books in the rocking chair in the morning, to long walks and Legos and playgrounds. To freedom. But I must clutch just as tightly to upcoming days as well. For the present in front of me then will be just as valuable - students to challenge, relationships to build, books to discuss, writing to fumble over or structure or just stumble upon. Those days will matter greatly as well. For everything there is a season.
Emily and I often read to our children passages out of Sally Lloyd-Jones' excellent book Thoughts to Make Your Heart Sing. In one of the passages we read this week, Lloyd-Jones writes about how despite the fact that the Israelites were saved by God out of slavery from the Egyptians, they still grumbled about how they thought life was better for them in the past, back in slavery. Writes Lloyd Jones: "Sometimes we're like those ungrateful people grumbling in their tents about onions. That's what sin is - not seeing that every single thing we have is a gift from God."
And there lies the path to appreciating the path yet living the present: gratitude. If I am purposefully grateful and appreciative each day, if I recognize the people I see, the food I eat, the opportunities I have, and the air I breath (even in the harsh winter) as precious gifts, then today will always be sweeter than yesterday.
I began writing this with no answers, and I'm not sure I've found any here. Loss and gain, the passage of time, moving on: it's all too complicated to wrap up into a nice neat blog post. But these feelings are universal, I'm led to believe, and writing them down and sharing just seemed like the human way to approach them. Thanks for listening.
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