memories

This is a writing prompt from one of my groups on Facebook.

Look out your window and write what you see...

this is what I wrote:

I lift open the light brown sheet that covers the window and peek out at the day. The grass is above ankle length in spurts as there is no actual turf in the yard. I can see the lightning rods that are anchored into the ground to prevent lightning from hitting the house. The dog have dug a new hole that will have to be filled before they decide that their toys belong inside it, I think to myself as I pet one of the puppies in my lap.

Then I look towards the small shed that holds memories and hurricane equipment. Some of the rubber maid tubs have graduated from the shed to the covered porch right outside the window. Those tubs hold things for my family that a lot of people no longer collect. In an era gone by those containers would have been wooden and sitting at the end of a little girl's bed. They would have been called hope chests.

We call them our children's memory totes. Inside them you will find pictures, an unused diaper from the first package of diapers they ever used, their tiny shirt and blanket that they used while in the hospital and a plethora of other newborn items. Thinking back to when they were younger, I can remember packing away one outfit that either I loved on them or that they loved, every time they grew to the next size.

Looking away from the boxes and the tubs to my children as they sit in the rooms behind me I realize just how much they have grown. My youngest is fifteen and growing up rapidly, right in front of my eyes. Her love of tutu's completely forgotten but the evidence of that love is safely enclosed in one of those memory tubs.

My middle daughter is laying on the couch, tired from her hormones changing. I look at her belly which has not yet begun to grow and think about all the little clothes in her tub on the porch that will soon have to be brought out and washed so that the life she grows inside her can wear what she wore in her infancy.

My oldest is standing at the door almost twenty years old, waiting for her special daughter to come home from her medical daycare. We have already started building her a tub, not to pass down to her children, because she won't be around long enough to experience motherhood.

We are creating her memory box for ourselves. It is currently filled with our memories of her short time with us. Slowly I look back towards the window to my back yard and porch and think about all those memories that we have stored away for reminiscing later.