Just now, I was hanging up skirts in my daughter’s closet after ironing them. I looked in, and there it was: the most perfect little turquoise sweater. And it’s getting too small.
Maybe it’s more intense when you have one child, but I’m sure that anyone who’s moved on from a child-raising stage gets a little weepy at having to pass on a particular beloved item of children’s clothing. This one child just happens to be my first and last. When she grows out of clothes, we tend to pass them on to the neighbours up the road who have two girls, and then we enjoy watching them wear the clothes as well. We get most of my daughter’s clothes from another neighbour who passes them on to us and feels the same way.
Sometimes, though, there’s a particular item of clothing that just feels too special. I don’t want to pass it on. I want to keep it, even though it’s getting far too small for her. It’s a little ridiculous sometimes. There’s a lovely velour dress that she’s been wearing as a nightgown for the last year because it’s too short to be a dress any more.
At some point, the clothes become unwearable. What then? Then, I do something awful. Sometimes I don’t pass them on. Sometimes I cut two squares out of them. These two squares are for our memory quilt.
Since my daughter was a baby, I’ve been saving squares for a memory quilt. There are seven years of squares in a little box downstairs. I don’t save everything: a few outfits a year go into the box, and there are more baby ones than there are others. Each of these little pieces has a lovely memory attached to it. A little bit of striped onesie reminds me of the summer my daughter was born. A piece of her old jacket reminds me of when she was in preschool. The turquoise sweater will remind me of her early school days.
One day, when my daughter is much older, I plan to sew all of these pieces together into two quilts: one for her and one for me.
How do you preserve memories of your kids’ childhoods?
Image Credit: Pale
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