No Basement

There is something about having a basement that lets one put off making decisions.  Can't decide whether to keep that wine rack that's too big for the kitchen?  Put it in the basement.  What about the bookcase that can double as a room divider that you bought at Ikea in Pittsburgh that's light-colored wood and even though you would have preferred a darker wood, it's still in excellent condition and so you hate to part with it?  Put that in the basement, too.  In the back room of the basement were bins filled with items too precious to let go, but too painful to go through.  They were Sofie's baby things. Bins filled with baby blankets, some of them sewn and crocheted.  Some graced her crib during that first month in the NICU when we weren't at all sure she would live.  Another from the second surgery she had to repair her skull.  Since this surgery finally worked, I took it as some kind of sign the blanket needed to be with us and so I had to take it home.  Which I guess means I stole it.  There's another bin full of stuffed animals.  I couldn't even begin to tell you who sent which animal but many of them stood watch over her.  And there were clothes I had collected long before she entered this world.  Beautiful little outfits for this beautiful little child we had long awaited.

Moving day came and I overheard a well-meaning neighbor who helped us move tell another helper that he wouldn't believe all the plastic bins he carried up from the basement.  I knew exactly what he was talking about and I have to say not all of the bins were Sofie's things, but many of them were. They took up a lot of room in the trailer that we worried wouldn't be big enough to cart away our life. This is the second time we've moved these bins cross-country.  A few years ago as we were contemplating moving to the Midwest,  I asked my husband if we shouldn't go through her baby things and he quickly shut me down, saying he didn't want her things touched.  My husband is generally rather easy-going, so a response like that signals absolute seriousness.  And so they were left.

We moved out of an 1800 square foot home into an 1800 square foot home.  But there is no basement. There's no need to duck from a tornado here and apparently no need to hide things you can't make a decision about either.  So all of the basement overflow landed in the garage.  Our dreams of parking both cars in the garage, out of the 115 degree heat at the time, were dashed.  Maybe it was a combination of the heat, and the pink peeking through the clear containers facing me every day,  or the sheer ridiculousness that these items had sat for 10 years now, that it was finally time.  I opened one bin and grabbed the first few pieces of clothing on the top and brought them to my nose.  I know that mothers who've lost a child or wives who lose husbands must keep clothing tucked away just for musky smells that must remain.  But there were no such smells.  Only Tide and Downy.  And the tiniest bit of mustiness that told me these clothes need to go to a new home and soon.  So I started making a pile.  The truth is I could only remember her in a handful of onesies, so I kept those as well as the animals and baby blankets.  Many other clothes still had price tags on them, and I felt so wasteful. After Sofie was born I read an article about how many traditional Jewish families don't set up a nursery or have baby showers or gather any baby items before a baby is born, and I thought how wise they were.  I had always said if I were to ever have another, I would follow in that tradition.  The pain of dismantling a nursery would be more than I could bear.

I have made half a dozen runs to the local Goodwill with bags of her items. Sometimes I have hesitated for a second, and even been guilty of pulling an item or two out of a garbage bag at the last minute, but they were all, in fact, handed off to the workers who don't give one time to hem and haw.  Which is a good thing.  The other day as I was dropping off a couple bags of her clothing, I thought, hey...I could go inside and if I see some of her things I could buy them.  But then I realized that sounded like a desperate mother who might be in need of a few rounds of therapy, and so I drove on home.  I pulled into the garage, which now holds two cars and a lot of special adaptive equipment for Sofie.  As hard as it was to let go of some of those things, I do feel like a load has been lifted.  Somewhere a perfect little baby will be wearing one of her perfect little outfits.  And I know that our although things did not turn out in any way I had ever imagined, our little Sofie is perfect in her own way too.