Now What?! Frog Boots and Board Books

A couple of years ago, I wrote about being on the precipice of empty nesting. Now, I am right smack dab in the middle of it.

Last month, I went to my son's college for parents' weekend. What an amazing experience it was to have a guided tour through the life he has created for himself there. When I came home, however, I was greeted by an unexpected walk down memory lane.

While grabbing some autumn/winter clothes and shoes bins from the attic, I toppled a bin halfway down the ladder that I thought was just full of shoes. Much to my surprise, when it did fall and open slightly, a light blue teddy bear peaked out of the top. This was not a bin of my autumn shoes but rather a bin of my college boy’s baby memorabilia.

So there I sat, in the middle of my upstairs hallway sifting through these items that represented a particular moment in time – items that took me back to the spring of 2002 and the year that followed. His father, my ex-husband, was also at parents' weekend and I know felt the same pride and nostalgia for the man our son has become. With this in mind, I obviously had no choice but to send him at least 10 pictures of what I was coming across in a play-by-play fashion.

The writer in me found it quite poetic that I came across these items right after returning home from parents' weekend. As with most things post-divorce, this isn’t how I pictured either activity. I didn’t picture driving separately across state lines to the school or sitting by myself in a silent house combing through the bin full of treasures – like that little blue teddy bear that was in his plexiglass bassinet in the NICU.

Or his little navy blue rubber boots with the green and orange frogs on them that he wore everywhere – outside or playing in his playroom; anywhere that he could even go with just a diaper. Or the beige corduroy overalls that he wore for his first Christmas, or his first pair of soccer cleats. There was also a small collection of his favorite board books, like Barnyard Dance and Goodnight Moon, that I could recite verbatim for years to follow.

The realization I reached was this: There is a great distinction between nostalgia and sadness.

Nostalgia is enjoying the memories and putting yourself right back in that moment in time with fondness (which was absolutely how I felt). During the past couple of years, I’ve found myself explaining those distinctions to people who assume any memory I share or reminiscing I do is in a tone of sadness.

They are not.

Memories exist for all of us, good and bad. If we are lucky, we continually add to our arsenal of friends we've met, people we've loved, and children we've watched grow.

Sometimes these people will separate from our lives or our relationship with them takes a different shape. Time takes things away such as relationships, possessions, or even our girlish figures (maybe that's just me), but we own our memories for as long as our minds allow.

You may not live in your childhood home, but that doesn't mean you can’t remember it fondly. You may be divorced, but that doesn't mean you don't look back on the love with laughter. You may have lost a family member to death, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't talk about that person often to keep his or her memory alive.

Your children may have moved on either to college or starting families of their own, but that doesn't mean that you can't get a warm feeling in your heart when you think of them in their little frog boots.

Look back on memories with gratitude – whether they are positive or negative. You lived those moments, and they have played a part, no matter how big or small, in getting you to this very moment in time.