Funny Sentimentality

I was digging around in my jewelry box this morning when I found a little plastic tag.  Anyone else would have seen it as trash and dismissed it, but I knew what it was right away.  It was the end of the plastic bracelet I wore when in the hospital delivering Baby Badger almost two years ago.  The rest of the bracelet is in her baby book, so why keep the tiny snippet?  Well, I have a sense of funny sentimentality.  The smallest things catch me unawares sometimes, and I find myself unable to let them go.  More subtle than photo albums (although I have plenty of those as well), more personal and secretive than a journal, some items trigger memories for me alone.  No one else would understand.

I had a box of baking soda in my cupboard that I bought right before Little Brother Badger was born.  I didn't really use it for anything, but I remember that I had just left for my maternity leave and was feeling very domestic.  I bought the box to help freshen our refrigerator and I guess I never opened it.  But, it reminds me of that exciting, scary time before my second child arrived.  I remember feeling so happy, and yet so worried about getting through childbirth.  And then the questions that seem silly now, as a Mommy of three: Could I possibly love my new baby as much as my precious boy?  How am I going to handle two children?  What if my boy doesn't like his new brother?

My sister got me a little stuffed cat that sits in my car, and has for 12 years.  She got it for me when I had just bought my first car, and was about to make the drive out to California to start grad school.  That drive was noteworthy for many reasons.  It was the first time I was out on my own, away from my parents and the East Coast.  It was my first great adventure.  And I made the trip with my relatively new boyfriend, who eventually became my husband.  That car was my first big purchase, my freedom, and my pride.  I ended up keeping it for ten years, letting it go only when it became clear that three kids were never going to fit into a two-door vehicle.  And that stuffed cat sat there the entire way.  It now sits in the van.  Not quite as prominently, as Baby would commandeer it immediately if seen, but there nonetheless.

My sister-in-law had a wedding shower and one of the favors was a pretty pen with a fabric flower wired onto it.  I still have it, and she just had her first baby.  I'm not sure if it still writes, but it reminds me of the happiness I feel in having the family I do.  I feel like my sisters-in-law are, indeed, my sisters, full-stop.  The transition from "child in a family" to "adult in a family" to joining another family and finally being part of that exalted pantheon of Aunts and Uncles seems like it happened in a heartbeat.  Such a small party favor, and yet, to me, such meaning.

Some items I will keep forever, like that snippet of hospital bracelet.  Some, I've had to let go, like that box of baking soda.  I imagine that somewhere down the road my children or grandchildren will shake their heads at how many small things of mine have persisted through the years.  They will throw away threadbare stuffed animals.  They may smile briefly, perhaps remembering how I refused to let something insignificant just get thrown away, or wonder why I still kept an unsharpened pencil from long ago, one with my name on it and decorated with tiger stripes.  My sense of sentimentality is somehow a little selfish, kind of an inside joke for me, myself, and I.  Lucky for me, my sentimentality can mostly fit in small spaces.