Another One Bites the Dust

"Grow we must, if we outgrow all that loves us." -Oliver Wendell Holmes

We've marked another rite of passage. Retired another old ballplayer. I was winterizing the backyard last month, putting our patio furniture in the garage for storage. I try my best to keep the garage neat over the winter even though I jam a bunch of stuff in there. I may not be good at fixing things, but I do organization well. Even if I'm organizing tools that I do not know how to use.

Summer neatly stacked away.

I'm big on consolidation, and creative yet safe stacking. There is an alcove in our garage where we store the Peanut's many vehicles. It's like a mini-parking garage at a kiddie shopping mall. Her wagon, her tricycle, her scooter.... her stroller.

The Peanut uses these things rarely, if ever, when it's cold outside. I was running out of room. And I called My Director to come in from the kitchen. (What she was doing in there, I have no idea since as you know she is NOT the cook in the house. She was probably stacking the dishwasher incorrectly. Bless her heart.)

I couldn't believe what I was about to say. But I said it nonetheless, "I think it's time to put the stroller in the attic."

Silence. Then a sigh and, "I guess you're right." (Let the record state that My Director said I was right.)

In that moment, we admitted to ourselves and each other that we don't have a baby anymore. She can walk. When she's tired, or clingy, she's carried. But the stroller, once a cornerstone of our existence, has become obsolete. A device once so crucial to our lives as parents, especially considering we lived in a city for the first 15 months of the Peanut's life, was now useless. Taking up space and collecting dust.

This reminded me of the moment a few months earlier when my wife finally took down the Peanut's potty training sticker chart. I called that chart a relic from our not-so-distant past. But the stroller is no relic. It's a monument.

I remember my solo Mondays with the baby Peanut. Back then, my days off were Sunday and Monday. After breakfast we'd load up the diaper bag, put the leash on Luna, and go out on the town. Bagel store, park, food shopping, dry cleaning. We were errand buddies. The three of us. Whenever we'd go inside, Luna would stow away quiety underneath:

Chunky Baby Peanut, with Luna underneath

The stroller was also the source of one of my wife's many hormone-induced meltdowns during pregnancy. Because she wanted to make sure we got the one she wanted - and in orange (it's a very significant color to us.) I actually had to call both of my sisters, who were on record as saying they were giving us the stroller as a gift (key word: gift), to tell them to make sure to get the Peg Perego 3500 or whatever it is... in orange. You know how awkward that is? To call your siblings and stipulate which $350 mechanical child transportation device they'd be purchasing for us? And that we'd accept no substitutes?

Flowers in the attic.

As I lugged that bulky albatross through the kitchen, up the stairs, into our bedroom, and up the attic stairs, I had an epiphany. We may never have a use for this thing again. Due to recent events, we're 50/50 at best to have another child. Maybe even less. And we've accepted and are happy with the reality that we may be a one-child family for good.

Still, it's amazing how for a time in your life certain things are so important, and so needed. And then in a blink, they're in the attic. With the crib, the car seat, and the baby swing.

I just hope the Peanut doesn't retire me to the attic anytime soon.

Click here to read about the sticker chart I mentioned above.