Tuesday, November 04, 2008

Move over, Monopoly.

At his current rate of growth, boy casts off clothing on a pretty regular basis. Pants get too short, shirts too tight, and socks too small -- and one of those pairs of socks ended up in the master bedroom, somehow. 

A few days ago, I opened up my lingerie drawer to get dressed after a shower and found a pair of tiny blue socks, balled up and nestled among the girly things, looking distinctly out of place. I plucked them out and turned to my husband. 

"Um, what ... ?"
"Oh, you found 'em? Just thought it would be funny."

And now it's ON.

I've hidden that same pair of little blue socks now in my husband's sock drawer and among his t-shirts. They're currently sitting in the box in the bathroom that holds Q-Tips, waiting for him to come across them. As I hide them, I always hope it'll make my husband laugh, just as I do when I stumble upon them myself. And they're a reminder of boy, and a way to tell each other that we were thinking not just of him but of one another.

More than that, though, I think our game is also about hanging on to the early days of boy's life. We've already packed away so many tiny items of clothing that he wore when he first came home, and keeping this one pair of blue socks in play is almost like a way we can keep that tiny baby here in the house somehow, even though the baby we see every day bears little resemblance to that newborn. The baby who lives here now has ridiculously huge feet for his frame, feet that are chubby and thick and burst out of shoes and socks in comical fashion. And he's bright and delightful, and I am smitten with him, and yet I miss that itty bitty guy, too.

So if it takes a pair of little blue socks to make the house feel like that brand-new person is still here, I'll keep on hiding them, and I'll smile every time they show up in my cereal bowl in the morning.

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