Boxes of bittersweet

The last several weeks Ben and I have been on something of an organization kick. My motivation has been to get our food storage organized, and to clear out some unused clutter. Ben's motivation was to be able to park his car in the garage next to the van. In order to do so, he needed to put a whole bunch of boxes up in the attic. In order to do that, he had to bring a whole bunch of boxes down for me to organize. So the bulk of our reorganization has involved me culling through a lot of old stuff, sending some off to sisters, some to Goodwill, and some to the trash.
It hasn't been easy.
My first job was upstairs in the big TV room. When we first moved into the house, I thought I would set up my photography studio up there. So I set up shelves with all of my photography paraphernalia-- props, backdrops, lights, etc. Well, shortly after we moved into this house, my MS took a nosedive, and it's become abundantly clear I will not be operating a photography studio upstairs.
Our crib was also set up in that room, and was actually used a couple of times by cousins. We have carted it around from house to house with the hope we would be able to use it again with another baby or two. But in the meantime, it has also been used by the boys for any number of reasons-- a trampoline, a fort, a jail, and who knows what else. It did not survive the boys. :-)
So anyway, a few weeks ago I spent a Saturday upstairs dismantling the crib and boxing up all my photography stuff.
It wasn't a very fun Saturday.
I remembered clearly the first time I set up that crib. I was 7+ months pregnant with the twins. Ben was in California doing an internship, and I was stifling my way through that hot summer with no A/C. I remember trying to get that thing set up with my great big pregnant belly in the way, and how awkward and ungainly I was. And how proud I was that I actually did it! It had been purchased used, with all the hardware, but no instructions, so it took some doing figuring it all out.
It was striking how similarly difficult it was for me to dismantle the crib for the very last time, but this time with my awkward, ungainly MS legs in the way. I sure wish I could trade them in for a big pregnant belly, let me tell you.

This last weekend I tackled the 7 boxes of baby clothes and gear that Ben brought down from the attic. I've successfully passed on most of our baby toys to my sisters. If they just took them to their local Goodwill, that's fine. At least I didn't have to do it. I can stand giving my babies' precious things to my sisters, but not to strangers. However, tackling the baby clothes has been a chore I've been putting off for a long, long time.
Ben set all the boxes in the middle of the garage so I couldn't ignore them.
Finally on Saturday I figured it was never going to get easier, so I may as well grit my teeth and do it. I thought I would keep a select few outfits that were most precious to me, and then give the rest of them to Goodwill, or even put an ad on Craigslist for twin boy clothes. But as I sat down to the task, I just couldn't do it. I tried picking up each item, folding it, and then coldly putting it in the designated pile. But my throat got all choked and tears wouldn't stop welling up in my eyes. As I picked up each outfit, I remembered all 3 of my boys wearing each one. I just couldn't get rid of them.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when I picked up the two little outfits I bought on the day I found out I was having 2 boys. Ben wasn't with me at that ultrasound (it was an unexpected surprise at one of my doctor's appointments), so on my way home I stopped at Target, bought two baby boy outfits, and wrapped each one separately. I gave them to Ben to open one at a time so that discovering the babies' genders could be as much of a surprise for him as it was for me. I had waited for so long to be able to buy any baby clothes at all. The day I found out I was pregnant, the day I found out I was having 2 boys, and the day I found out I was pregnant with Moses will probably always be in my top 5 happiest days of my life. So when I picked up those two outfits and thought about putting them in a box for Goodwill where maybe someone would buy them for their baby boy, or maybe they would end up being thrown away, I balked. I could not do it. I thought about telling Ben to just forget it. We'll just have to cart those 7 boxes around for the rest of my life. But I knew he wouldn't go for that.
Finally I remembered someone in my ward who told me how she cut up all her kids' baby blankets into squares and made a larger quilt using pieces from all of the old blankets. I decided I'd do something similar.
So I cut all those clothes into big squares. I had two of a lot of the outfits (twins, remember), so I felt ok about cutting one of them to keep, and giving the other away. There were still about 5 outfits that I couldn't cut, either, a least not yet. I'll keep those. But I ended up with 3 boxes to give to Goodwill, 2 boxes to throw away (clothes that were either cut up or stained beyond repair), 1 box to send to my sister, and 1 box of squares that I will one day make into a quilt. Or maybe just keep and once in a while open and take out the squares one by one, remembering with what joy I bought that particular outfit, or the memories I have of my boys as babies and toddlers wearing it.
To add to the bittersweet, I found an old Zipdisk on which I had saved some of the early pictures of Brigham and Joseph. I saved them onto my new computer and spent some time looking through them. I sure hope in the hereafter there will be some way of going back and re-living certain parts of our lives.
Here are two pictures of Joseph and Brigham when they were about 2 weeks old.

This is my Brigham. To me, the twins have had their essential "look" since the day they were born. Brigham held his legs up like this all the time-- I called them his froggy legs. He was a calm baby, patient and quiet. There is such a thing as muscle memory, and the muscles of my arms still remember holding him, I can almost feel it.



And baby Joseph. He was always wide-eyed and alert like this. He startled so easily. He would start, and throw his arms out to the side like this and wake himself up. He had the highest-pitched little cry. We called him "The Teapot." :-) We had to wrap him in blankets like a mummy so he couldn't get those darned arms out and wake himself up. :-)