So there I am standing at the bottle return machine, tossing in Coke Zero and Pepsi Max cans, when I find something very strange: a sticky pair of my six year old son's socks.
It's not the first time I've found something weird in the bottle bag. The container we toss the returnables into is right next to the trash, and I've found everything from socks to toys to food in the bottle bag. Lovely little surprises. Not.
After I set the socks aside and finish emptying the bag, a group of young kids with carts full of beer cans and bottles comes in. They're probably college age, I figure. I move on to the glass-return machine. There are only two of those, and I'm standing next to one of the young boys when I notice what's in the bottom of his cart: a pair of socks!
"Are those socks?" I ask.
He looks up at me, surprised. "Uh... yeah. I have no idea how they got into the bottles."
"Want to see something funny?" I reach under the plastic bags and show him the pair of socks I'd found in my bag. "My son's."
He laughs. "I guess it never ends. You'll still be finding socks in the bottles when he's twenty-two."
I laughed, too, but it occurred to me... I'll never find William's sticky socks mixed up with the returnables. He'll never be a twenty-two year old kid returning beer bottles at the store with his friends.
I pushed my cart away quickly, still smiling, because I didn't want him to see the tears welling up. It's just too hard to explain to people anymore how I can be laughing and crying, all at the same time.
9 comments:
I never knew it was possible to laugh and cry at the same time until Lachlan was born. Isn't it amazing how everything can remind us of our little ones? Even socks in a bottle bag.
i think of the things our babies wont do as well. it's so painful...
I hate it when things like this occure to me too. And I still can not fathom how it is possible to laugh when tears are welling up. And I hate, hate, hate that my son will never grow up to get in trouble, to go to college, to have friends, to never return bottles.
It's so hard thinking of all the things he'll never do. :(
I never thought it was possible to laugh and cry at the same time. Every time I see a baby my son's age, or when I hear a pregnancy joke, I can laugh on the outside and yet cry a little on the inside.
xoox
It always surprises me when those moments come, the 'he'll never...' For me this morning it was making pancakes, and realizing that I'll never make him pancakes in the shape of an 'E' like my dad made 'S' pancakes when I was little.
I've had some laughing/crying moments too- they always seem to hit hard because my reflexes are down.
yeah, those "never" moments seem to come out of nowhere sometimes... such a huge trigger, and a reminder that the loss isn't only in the past and in the present, it's in the future too. :(
Oh we're never going to stop missing them are we? At every age. At one. At five. At fifteen. At twenty-two. At thirty five. The sticky socks we won't be getting mixed up with the bottles.
The people they might have grown up to be. The things they will never do.
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