Reminisce: My Life

After a brief blogging hiatus, I am pleased to announce that I have not one, not two, but three blog entries in the works for the next week or so.  I really need to schedule in some time to write on a weekly basis so I can update this more often, which is exactly what one of my future posts is going to be about: Scheduling and Organization and How On Earth Do We Get Anything Done Around Here.  That's a pretty catchy title, isn't it?  But, now that I have you on the edge of your seat, dying to hear what will come from that fantastic and catchy title, I'm going to write about something different. So onto today's actual post.

The other day I was looking for space to store some winter clothes I purchased for Gideon at a second-hand store.  Every tote I have in our half-story attic is full..We emptied one (and when I say empty, I mean we dumped the contents on the attic floor and left them there thinking we'd get them put somewhere else in a day or two.  Now that's a funny joke) in order to "store" newborn baby goats in the kitchen to keep warm.  So I was minus a tote anyway, and then I happened upon one that was half-full and realized I could go through it fairly quickly, throw some things away, rearrange, and have an empty tote for Gideon's clothes!  Voila!  But, I should know myself well enough by now to realize I'm a pretty sentimental person, so when I go through a box of old things I end up spending two hours looking at everything and reliving all the past moments that I associate with said items and that this rearranging would take up, more than likely, the rest of my day. 

This box happened to have old pictures, news clippings, and other memorabilia from my high school days.  One little box contained notes written to  me from friends in high school and college.  I spent almost an hour re-reading old news that wasn't even all that important at the time much less now, but I couldn't help but smile at the memories they dug up.  I'm a pretty nostalgic person, so I tend to look at times gone past with sadness that it is over and longing to revisit those days.  There were prom pictures, one very special one of my cousin and me with my grandma (now bedridden and unresponsive because of Alzheimer's), a newspaper clipping from an article about the three generations of Hagerstown FFA presidents that have been in my family (my grandpa, dad, and me), a poem written to me by a friend, cards written from my college friends from when I left after only two years of school, and lots of pictures from a school exchange with twenty students from Buenos Aires, Argentina from my sophomore year in high school, not to mention a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle McDonald's toy I had acquired sometime ago that my boys were pretty excited about.  The pictures brought back so many wonderful memories, and I kept smiling at each new discovery of something special that marked a significant (or not so significant) occurrence in my life.

My cousin Laura and me at our senior prom

But the funniest thing to me was that when I was in high school, as much as I enjoyed it at the time, I had one goal in mind.  I wanted to get married and have lots of children.  That's it.  Those were my big plans, my fantastic dreams: to have lots of babies and a wonderful man to share it all with.  I remember thinking that it was all so far away; that those dreams would never, ever come true because time was moving. so. slowly.  But now I look back and everything since then has been a blur.  I went to college, met Greg, got engaged, moved home, got married, had Gideon, got goats, had Lincoln, got more goats, had Canaan, and here we are.  For so long, everyone older than me told me to "Savor every moment" because "it goes so fast", and I believed them, I truly did.  But I had yet to experience exactly what that meant.  And it really put it in perspective for me as I sat next to an empty box with piles of meaningless papers and photos of people and a time that was so dear to me at the moment, but have now been almost completely lost.  It reminded me that there are so many precious moments right now occurring around me while I try to keep the kitchen floor clean, and the laundry folded, and the books on the bookshelf, all of which are necessary tasks. But at the end of the day, these precious moments when my children are small are infinitely more important than whether or not my house is completely presentable at every moment of every day (and believe me, it rarely is).  While some parts of this season of life are so trying and aggravating and painstaking, they are also beautiful and heartwarming and un-repeatable.

Gideon at 5 months

Lincoln at 5 months

Canaan at 5 months

It made me fast forward to the time when I will be sitting beside another box full of baby clothes and crinkled crafts from our first year of preschool and the first pair of cowboy boots the boys wore while I'm only days away from one of their high school graduations asking "Where did the time go?"  Because I know I'll be there.  Before I know it.  Before I have time to blink.  Just like those high school days that were dragging by so slowly, and now are mere momentos in a box, so these days will skip by me without me even noticing, if I'm not careful.  And so while there are so many frustrating moments right now (like why does my two-year old dump out every container he finds whether it's full of water, cereal, or mashed potatoes?), when it's over, the memories will be little treasures that I keep in my heart, and making as many of them as possible is so much more important that anything I have to accomplish right now or today or this week or ever until I've accomplished the task of raising them and sending them on their way. 

And I think I'll go clean out another box--I need to make room for the momentos I'll be saving to remind me of this precious stage in the boys' life and in mine.