A drawer of memories...

As I've mentioned earlier, I've been a cleanup-clean out tear through the house; first the garage, then the unfinished side of the basement, our office and even the bedroom. We are leaving a huge pile for one of the charities that picks items up at the front door this week, so I cajoled my husband into going through his clothes and donating those he doesn't need. He filled two huge trash bags!

The last group of clothes we culled through were his tee shirts. He loves these shirts; as soon as he gets home from work, he tosses on a graphic "t" that he's picked up on one of our trips. Going through these shirts was like taking a step into the past. We laughed our way through the drawer.

 There were shirts from relatively recent trips, such as all the college shirts he collected as we traveled around the country looking at schools for our oldest, combining college evaluations with visits to old college friends and relatives.

Then there were shirts that went back to the trips we took when the kids were really young. Cayman Islands, where they ate turtle and went snorkeling and jet skiing for the first time and Legoland in California which we visited within a month of opening and were in awe of the huge, elaborate models of dragons and animals.

Then there was the shirt from Goombays, a bar in Kill Devil Hills, NC, which really took us back. This was from a vacation we took with two other families when Bobby was 6 months old and Billy was 4. We all had small kids and we rented one of those lovely large houses in Corolla on the beach. We had a fabulous time and one of the days, the guys went golfing and then hit this bar. We used to drink the rum drink "Goombays" with these couples when we were in the "pre-child" stage, and so when they saw this place they had to go in. Well, they stayed a lot longer than they should and came home to some annoyed wives (and 6 kids under the age of 4). They thought we'd be so thrilled because they bought us all these Goombay shirts!.

But the shirt that really got us was the National Aquarium, Baltimore shirt. This was from the time we took Billy there when he turned 5. We decided to make it a special day for just him and so we took Bobby to daycare as was the usual routine. But of course, Bobby, 18 months old at the time, knew something was up, because normally only one of us would drop him off before work, and here were all of us taking him there, and waving lovingly as we rushed to get the train to Baltimore. We were taking the train out of Wilmington and were cutting it close so Dave dropped me off at the station to get the tickets while he and Billy parked the car in the garage. Well, it was one of those multi-story garages that winds around and around...and around and Billy (to this day) gets car sick. So after about the 3rd floor he's feeling nauseous and by the time they park on the roof, Billy just barely makes it out of the car and gets sick. Once we were on the train we figured we were safe, as he usually feels much better after he tosses his cookies. Well...he wasn't finished and even the train made him sick and this time he got his shirt and shorts as well. So, we show up in the Baltimore train station with a much recovered but stinking 5 year old. I ran to the train station souvenir shop and they only have tee shirts, no shorts or pants. Thank god Billy has always been an easy going kid and not a fashionista, because I ended up buying him an adult sized shirt that hung beyond his knees and that is what he wore for the trip to the aquarium. And he loved the aquarium, we ended up having a great day (that we obviously never forgot), with Dave picking himself up the fore mentioned tee shirt as we left. Of course, as we were returning home, we had a call from Dave's mom telling us that the daycare had called her within an hour of us dropping Bobby off, saying that Bobby didn't feel well. She had him for the entire day with no signs of illness. We think he realized that something was up when the three of us dropped him off so cheerfully in the morning and he sure wasn't going to stick it out in daycare while we were off gallivanting around without him!

So in the end my husband donated 13 shirts but kept 28! Each of the 28 is a memento of the fun trips and journeys we've shared with our kids. I will not push him to ever toss a single one of these remaining shirts and I'm so glad we went through them and delved into this drawer of memories.