In the corner of my sock drawer, there are three treasures: Baby Purple, White Mouse, and Blue One Paci. I suppose they are the epitome of one man’s junk; another man’s treasure. To me, they are priceless relics of the past.
White Mouse was the first special toy my children had. He is a hard toy mouse whose front paws are permanently fixed together close to his face, so it looks like he always has a piece of cheese to enjoy. He fits perfectly in the palm of a young boy’s hand. He also fits nicely in the jeans pocket of a young boy, for that is where White Mouse was often kept. We never knew that White Mouse had come along with us on outings until we saw him coming out of our son’s pocket. “Where did White Mouse come from?” My son would shrug and pat his pocket, telling us all we needed to know. I noticed him in the most surprising places. Once, I saw him come out of a pocket on our third flight of the day. We had gone through airport security several times, and not once did I realize we had a stowaway. I noticed him at the zoo watching the animals with my son and at restaurants sitting on the table right next to a plate.
White Mouse was quite content as the lone special toy in our house. He didn’t need any companionship other than his boy, even though I suspect he liked the attention he drew from our daughter. Big Brother, however, did not enjoy the attention Little Sister gave White Mouse. We frequently called our oldest daughter a parrot because she loved to copy her brother when they were little. Since she couldn’t have White Mouse, she needed a friend. At just the right time, along came Baby Purple. Baby Purple is about the same size as White Mouse, but she’s an animal whose species I cannot identify. She also has a bobble head, which caused much consternation for my son, whose very own White Mouse did not, indeed, have a bobblehead.
My daughter’s delight over having a toy she, too, could fit into her pocket so aggravated her big brother that the Great War of White Mouse and Baby Purple started. I don’t know how often I told them, “People are more important than things. If you two cannot get along because of your toys, I’ll have to take them both until you can be kind.” I‘m not sure if I ever got through to them, because the wars continued. Big Brother wanted Baby Purple just because Little Sister had her, and when she would relent after negotiating what she thought was a trade, he still wouldn’t give her White Mouse. Instead, he’d hold Baby Purple hostage, and White Mouse would win the battle. On the few occasions when Little Sister did get White Mouse, he became a prisoner of war and was humiliated into having to participate in yet another wedding. I couldn’t stop the squabbling over the toys, so they were constantly put away for a day as I tried to help their covetous hearts love each other more than they did things.
Eventually, Big Brother and Little Sister outgrew White Mouse and Baby Purple. I found them discarded underneath the couch one day and realized they hadn’t been played with for a while. Their appearance caused a surge of delight, and it was then that I realized that parenting is made of its own fleeting moments.
When I became a mom at twenty-five, most of my life was still ahead of me. Even my mid-forties—where I reside today—seemed far away. The rapid changes of my growing children made me realize how short it really is. Every time we experienced the wonder of a new baby, my husband and I would try to remember the older siblings at the different stages of infancy and toddlerhood, and we couldn’t. It had all flown by, much too fast and short. And before I knew it, I was a mom in my late twenties, my thirties, my mid-forties.
The writers in the Bible wisely understood the brevity of human life. In Psalm 144, King David asked the eternal God why he would regard him when, “Man is like a breath; his days are like a passing shadow (Psalm 144:4). In another Psalm, the psalmist observed, “My days are like an evening shadow; I wither away like grass” (Psalm 102:11). Job also had similarly learned that “We are but of yesterday and know nothing, for our days on earth are a shadow” (Job 8:9).
Where I was once a young woman full of energy, I now bear a head streaked with white hair, and my face is weathered from age and hardships. Yet it feels as though hardly any time has passed since I was still young. Besides the toddler, I’ve long been the slowest person in my family, and I have to assure my children that I was once an athlete. My children have changed from helpless newborns to their current states—two of them in their full-grown bodies, two not quite grown but getting close, and one a toddler with his awkward gait and funny sentences. It won’t be long before I’m holding some of my babies’ babies, and life will seem even faster.
Three weeks before my oldest was born, a friend sent me a letter. She’s the kindest, most thoughtful person, and she wanted to share with me her experience with her baby, who was born several months before my first child. She told me that the first four months were terribly hard. During that time, she wondered if she would ever enjoy motherhood. Her letter turned to encouragement, though—she had found a rhythm and was enjoying motherhood finally. She loved her days spent at home with her infant and was discovering new ways to be busy and occupied that were enriching her life. I tossed the card aside. It was impossible to imagine that someone wouldn’t enjoy motherhood, even if just for a few months.
When my baby was born, and I held him close to me, studying his little nose and mouth, I knew I would never say the same things. My baby was special. I loved him and would always enjoy motherhood. Two weeks later, I sat on my bed sobbing after my husband had left for work, unsure if I could continue another day of feeding the baby around the clock on no sleep. I had liked my life before the baby and wondered if I would ever recover from the delivery, the postpartum hormones, and the sleep deprivation. And then I remembered my friend’s card. I dug it out from beneath a stack of books and reread her words that gave me permission to grit my teeth through that season and just do the next thing. I had to.
Before I knew it, I no longer had a newborn, and the sleep deprivation and nonstop feeding around the clock were long gone. My son had chubby cheeks, finally, and could smile and laugh and sleep through the night. Like my friend, I found my rhythm and enriching ways to occupy my days with my son.
It wasn’t until my fourth child that I actually appreciated the newborn phase. She was born eight and a half years after my oldest, and my perspective had changed. I knew I would never again get to snuggle her older siblings the way a newborn allows you to, with their whole, tiny body relaxing into you and fitting so easily on your shoulder and chest. I still disliked the sleep deprivation as much as with my first, but I smiled more during those early months with my fourth child and held her longer. I knew the hard and the good of the season wouldn’t last. As I held the tiny miracle of a baby—my baby—I marveled more than ever at her and had a heart full of thankfulness that I had been blessed with a small brood of children.
Now, when I look at pictures of my five children as newborns, it’s hard to believe that’s who they once were. They’re big and strong and funny now. They have their own gifts, talents, and ideas that they share. The little boy who used to carry around White Mouse is an adult, and Baby Purple’s protector is just six months from her eighteenth birthday.
Blue One Paci is in my dresser drawer corner, buried beneath a pair of socks, right next to Baby Purple and her enemy, White Mouse. Blue One Paci is exactly what you might guess from its name: a blue pacifier. At some point in my youngest child’s second year of life, he decided there was only one pacifier he would take. We tried to get him not to be so particular, seeing that Blue One Paci might be lost or eventually break, but he was not to be convinced. Whenever he was tired or upset, he’d call out, “Need Blue One Paci!” The day came when Blue One Paci’s tip started to come apart, and we deemed it a choking hazard. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, though, and gave it a spot as a relic of the past.
It’s funny how these trifles have all the meaning in the world. They help me remember how my children once were; how they’ll never be again. But more than that, they’re a reminder of who our God is. They point me to his unchanging, unwavering, unending faithfulness (Lamentations 3:22-24), and remind me that he is growing my children and their parents to our completion in Christ Jesus (Philippians 1:6). Many years ago, I spent many days feeling like all I did was correct and discipline two little toddlers who couldn’t stop squabbling over their silly little toys. Their tears and outbursts left me at the end of the day wanting to shed my own tears. It felt like they would never grow up. But now I have grown and almost-grown children, and I can see how those moments were being used for their instruction and development, even when it felt like they would never change.
I can get sad now that those sweet, fun, simple days are gone. The kids don’t want to stay home all the time now and just play. They don’t ask me relentless questions, expecting me to know every single thing about this world. They don’t need me to scoop them up when they have a little boo boo or comfort them at bedtime. Those moments were fleeting.
But we want our children to grow. We want them to give up childishness and to mature. We want them to embrace wisdom, work, and responsibility to the glory of God.
Someday, all I’ll have left of my children’s childhoods are memories and perhaps a few trinkets. For someone who has had children in the home for nineteen years and will for at least another sixteen, Lord willing, that seems sad to me. But the fleeting moments of this life can make up a life well-lived. The hard moments that change us and grow us, the sweet moments that we cherish and miss, the moments of love and forgiveness, and the moments of gratitude and humility all have the potential to add up to tell a story of how God remained steadfast. We change as we jump from fleeting moment to fleeting moment of hard and good and in-between, but he remains the same.
The night after my oldest left for college, I went into his room and slowly spun around. Most of his stuff was gone, but a few knickknacks representing his childhood remained. I picked up trophies and books as I dusted. I moved a few shirts as I vacuumed. And I cried. A room once filled with my son and his belongings was mostly empty. It wasn’t the absence of his stuff that hurt; it was his absence. But as I ran my fingers over his bookshelf, still full with the books of his childhood, I was grateful. Grateful for the little relics of his past, of my past, that reminded me of what a good gift I had been given in him. I was grateful for the beautiful childhood I got to behold and enjoy.
As I stood there, I knew he would never get to go back to who he once was, a boy who carried a toy mouse around in his pocket and had never lived outside of his parents’ home. He will change. We will change. The relationships of the six people still in our house will change. (His bathroom has already changed as his dad and sister decided to paint it. His bedroom has also changed, but that is not to be detailed in a way that leaves incriminating evidence.) He’ll go through more changes, as will the rest of our family. His toddler brother will grow so much that Big Brother will come home on break, shocked at the difference. We’ll send another off to college next year, and before we know it, they’ll be graduating and moving on to a new season of life—more fleeting moments. We may only have little relics of the past as evidence of all that once was and is no longer to be. And though our hearts may grieve that we can’t grasp the fleeting moments just a little longer, we can trust the Lord that he is the unchanging, unwavering, immutable giver of these good gifts.
Image via Pxhere.
