I got rid of my last baby hanger today.
It was one of the creamy satin ones with the little pink ribbon that always made what was hanging on them feel extra fancy, and unique.
I’d been given a pack of six of them at my baby shower for my now 15 year old, Chloe.
After a devastating miscarriage before her, hanging little girl things on them as I waited for her arrival felt extra meaningful to me.
I had dreamt of these daughters,
I had dreamt of painting nurseries,
and delicate morning light streaming in from a quiet street.
I was already struggling to clean out my youngest daughter, Paige’s, closet.
It had taken a lot to come to terms with the fact that this last child of mine has absolutely no desire for frills or dresses, and there was no reason to hang onto all the hand-me-downs I’d left in her closet that “still would totally fit her” that all of her big sisters had worn just for my own memories:
The Spanish looking one I remember Alena spinning around in with a smile on her face because she felt so beautiful,
the tan one with the lacy details I had splurged on for Chloe to wear for parties and holidays,
the bright colored one that so suited Tessa’s entire being and that when she’d slip on would light up her whole face.
Paige had never been one for playing dress up.
She would just as soon be in the same stained T-shirt and shorts for three days.
She doesn’t care about what “would totally fit her.”
She cares if it reps a band, skateboarding, or a sport’s team,
and, after a recent battle on Easter Sunday, trying to get her to agree to at least SOME KIND of dressy looking thing so our family pictures wouldn’t look like she had been stored in the shed,
I realized it was time to just accept my girl exactly as she is,
and who she is is somewhat feral and is passionate about shorts with holes and a drawstring.
Sometimes it’s hard to stop hanging onto our ideas of who and how they should be.
Each dress I pulled was a memory flood, much more than just linen and lace.
Each dress felt like it still contained the essence of my little girls.
The pile growing on the bed to be stuffed into a trash bag was so much more to me than the idea of just more closet space, and it stung a little.
This one was several Christmases…
This one birthday dinners…
This one was Tessa’s sparkly eyes, lit up from the inside, on a school play stage.
A mother’s heart never forgets the string of that type of fleeting moments.
Sometimes the only way I’ve felt able to hold onto them is by keeping their outgrown and discarded things.
In my garage sit four large plastic bins, each labeled with one girl’s name.
Inside are certain clothes they once wore, school art projects, stuffed animals, handprints;
To an onlooker, just scribbles and the dusty tatters of things,
But I will tell you, those four bins are some of the only things I have grabbed multiple times when, during wildfires, we have had to evacuate.
I was about done with the closet when I looked up at the emptying closet pole, and saw that very last baby hanger I owned looking back at me.
I thought I’d already gotten rid of them all a few cleans before, when I switched them all out to adult hangers to accommodate her bigger sized things,
but there it hung, gently rocking from all the dresses being pulled,
as if it had been waiting to give me the time it knew I would need, patiently.
It was as if it knew that I would need that last little moment before there was a complete vanishing of all the baby things;
When the lullabies turn to just vapors,
and the toys strewn all around suddenly go back to a hardwood floor that’s, once again, always now hauntingly clean.
I took the hanger down from the closet pole and stood in silence for a while.
For a moment in time, the whole world became just that little hanger, that pink bow, and me.
It whispered to me and asked me if I felt ready.
My heart whispered back, “No. Not really.”
Not ready to move on from any of these Memory Clothes.
Not ready for only new things.
Not ready for no more twirling giggles in front of mirrors, as little voices ask,
“Mommy, do I look pretty?!”
“Yes, Honey. You are just about the most beautiful thing that I have ever seen.”
I folded the most special dresses up to box up and save for one day when each girl is grown and takes from the garage their own bin.
I hope that when they unbox the pieces of them that I’ve held onto that on that day my mother’s heart, and eyes for them will be fully known;
The things I treasured, too,
the things about them that I saw value in.
I hope that they’ll realize it wasn’t the dresses that were most precious to me, and that it had nothing to do with a print, or the way something tied up, but how that with each one of them that I took down came the cooing bath times, the doing their hair on the counter, every time I broke a sweat as I got them ready for something and buttoned them.
As I held that last hanger, my life played like a film from first ultrasound strips to now even my oldest one’s wedding;
A lifetime of dreams realized, laughter, extremely hard work, many tears, and,
most of all, an overflowing joy woven gently into years worth of soft cotton and lace.
Holding that hanger and deciding to let it hang as a reminder, or to pack it up, too,
was my hand on a door that I did not want to step through then pull closed behind me all the way:
A door that leads to a future I haven’t had time or desire to even imagine yet,
because I’ve been so busy enjoying what has been my most favorite place.
Some people let go easily, and just move on with bright eyes, excited for each new upcoming thing,
but my heart needs more time than some people.
That hanger, it understood me.
It understood that the tiniest things, for some mothers, often bear the most weight.
“Thank you,” I whispered to it, placing it on the pile of dresses.
“I have loved this life, and all these pastel moments.
Thank you for holding memories and space.”
Mom Outnumbered
Hi! My name is Kerri Green; Wife to Justin, and mother to four highly entertaining daughters -Alena, Chloe, Tessa, and Paige. I am an artist, a writer, a daycare provider, a lover of people, a believer that there is humor and beauty in all things, and the author of Mom Outnumbered; a blog about real family life, and my observations of it. My goal is to make people laugh, to be there for them when they cry, and most importantly, to let them know that they are not at all alone in this up and down world. I live with my family in Sebastopol California, and I am opening the window into our life. So welcome! Come in. Sit down. Just please don’t mind the mysterious wet spots.
