I am not a very sentimental person. I don’t have a hope chest. I didn’t preserve and keep my wedding dress. My children’s baby books are either not started or not finished. I can purge a house like it’s my job.
That all being said, it’s only natural that as my children grow older, I don’t think twice about packing up the clothes they have outgrown or giving their old toys to Goodwill.
Our youngest is getting close to turning three, and we are starting to make the transition to full on “big girl room.” In order to make room for her toddler bed to convert to a full-size bed, the final “baby thing” to get rid of was the glider. I snapped a picture of it with my phone and without giving it much thought, gave it a price tag and posted it on a local buy/sell page on Facebook and waited.
It’s a nice glider, it didn’t last long for sale.
As I was getting it cleaned and freshened up to get rid of, out of nowhere, I cried. Not “my eyes watered and a single tear ran down my cheek” cried. We’re talking Kim Kardashian status ugly cry. Right there on the floor in my daughter’s bedroom.
Don’t worry, nobody witnessed this moment, so my Fort Knox of emotion is still intact.
Why would a dumb chair make someone who is not a very emotional person cry??
It was in that moment that I realized that the chair represented so much more to me than just a piece of furniture.
Almost eight years ago, we started trying to conceive. It took over two years, countless doctors appointments, tests, treatments, medications, procedures, loss, and a lot of prayers before that dream became a reality. My husband deployed just three months into my first pregnancy. Like any good first-time parents, we put the nursery together early. I had researched everything from cribs to changing tables, to yes, gliders. I remember the trip we made to the one store in a 1,000 radius of where we lived that carried all the things that I knew would create the perfect nursery.
I sat in dozens of gliders that day. I’m tall; it needed a high back. It needed arm cushions and a footstool. It couldn’t rock, only glide. Must be easy to clean. It had to be a neutral color, so it could be used for more kids. Good quality, but not out of budget. As far as gliders go, this one was perfect.
As Goldilocks would say, it was just right.
For six months, that glider sat in my son’s nursery awaiting his arrival. Toward the end of my pregnancy, I sat in there many times imagining the days to come, a scene I would repeat a little over three years later awaiting my daughter’s birth. I spent countless hours nursing babies in that chair. I rocked fussy babies and comforted sick toddlers from that chair. I must have read Goodnight Moon 2,990,345,000 times in that chair. My husband spent his own share of time in the glider creating his own memories.
I cried many times in that chair when the struggles of postpartum depression were just too much.
That glider really was just a piece of furniture. However, getting rid of it brought the clarity of how far I’ve come in my time as a mother; that, through all the tears of joy and sadness and all the struggles and celebrations, they still grow up and life keeps moving forward.
Babies don’t keep.
So to the young mother that bought my faithful glider, I pray it becomes your place of comfort through parenting’s great journey as you feed, rock, and cuddle your own sweet babies.
And watch that right arm cushion, it likes to come off.
Beautiful story! Took me down my own Memory Lane.
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