Gabe goes to AWANA.
Which is totally not relevant to this story except that it was at AWANA where this event took place. I’ll save my discourse on AWANA for another day! Anyway, at this particular AWANA program, parents must come to their child’s room and pick them up. They won’t release the children to go find his parents on his own. The parents have to physically show up and personally claim their child.
I like that.
Because I’m neurotic and grieving and a little crazy, I’m sort of obsessive about collecting Gabe as soon as I possibly can. School gets out at 3:20 and I arrive there at 3:00 so I can get one of the first places in the pick-up line so he doesn’t have to spend one extra moment at school waiting for my turn in the pick-up line. Likewise, for AWANA last night I kept a close eye on the clock; when it was 7:30 and we had a half-hour left I excitedly declared that we had only a FEW more minutes left until we could see him again. Tahd, who half thought I was joking, rolled his eyes at me a little and told me I was cute. But I wasn’t joking. I couldn’t wait to pick him up. When it hit 7:42, I decided the time had come and we could go in to wait for our turn outside his classroom door.
While we waited, another mother – like us – waited outside the same door for her son. Except unlike us, she had a daughter – a little tow-headed girl whose gallons of energy easily overflowed and infected everyone in the hall. The toddler backed down the aisle, turned toward her mother, and barreled at top speed toward her, forcefully ramming into her mother’s leg and dissolving in piles of giggles. Tahd and I couldn’t help but follow suit, and the mother acknowledged that her daughter was a handful!
I watched the little girl collide with her mother’s leg, and as she ran I noticed she had red shoes. Red patent shoes like the ones at the top of this post, the ones I posted in yesterday’s “What I Wore Wednesday.” Except they were sweeter, more like Mary Janes with coordinating flowers on top. Maybe like this, except with more floral accessories…
Before I knew it, I had murmured to Tahd who was standing behind me, “I totally would have bought Mara shoes like that.”
<gulp>
And then I cried, for no reason except I realized one thing – one concrete, real thing – I will have missed with Mara. Red shoes. Red shoes like mommy’s.
<sigh>
She would have looked really cute in those shoes!
It’s always the day-to-day stuff that gets ya, you know? During this whole road of fertility, the stuff that would make me tear up were the day-to-day things like going to the park, taking a walk, making dinner with the kids that I imagined. You are always in my prayers.
xoxo,
em
.-= Emily´s last blog ..Changes 2 & 3… =-.
She would have loved red shoes, too, Hon!! I opened the door to the upstairs closet to store some of my summer clothes when I was changing my closet last Friday afternoon, and drew in a gasp when I saw, for the first time since Mothers’ Day, the darling little girl – what would have been for Mara – outfits I have been collecting. I sobbed … freshly missing your/our precious baby girl!! We love her and you soo much!! And times, like your “red shoes” times, just come upon us and it is OK to miss her keenly — since we always miss her!! She is forever in our hearts!!
A colleague of mine has a grandchild who was due around the time I would have been due with my molar pregnancy. It’s hard to see the little guy and know, “my child would be that age.” Many hugs to you…
.-= RenovationGirl´s last blog ..Big Girl Blogger =-.