The Robe

January in Minnesota is a dangerous time.  They call it SAD.  Seasonal affective disorder.  It has been dark and cold now for awhile and we have to guard our mental health.  One way I do this is the January purge.  The whole house list I call it.  We go through stuff and set aside things we no longer need or use for the goodwill pile.  Another way we cope with SAD is by consuming chocolate.  I've actually been pretty good about that--since I've been on this new fad diet--called eating three meals a day with one snack.  Crazy I know, but that is another blog.

So I'm doing the whole house list--little by little--you read about the CD rack.  I'm just being honest when I tell you that I actually have a spread sheet I use to check off the areas in the house.  I haven't used it lately, but it does exist somewhere in the bowels of the computer.  Just being honest.  Am I the only person who wonders if every space in the house were organized, including that never never land called the basement, would I truly find peace?  Deep inner peace?

I doubt it but hope springs eternal.  It's cheaper than medication and spring will come.

I bought a new robe with my birthday money.  It is really soft and fluffy and just like the blanket Mary got for her baptism--in a soft blush pink.  The old robe?  It is about ten years old.  There have been moments when I thought maybe this old robe saved my marriage.  It keeps me warm here in Minnesota, when I was perfectly happy without a warm fuzzy robe in warm Austin, TX.  Well maybe not perfectly happy, but the robe makes cold dark Minnesota January mornings face-able. It once was white and fluffy. Now, it has more coffee spilled on it than I care to admit.  This is the routine, you see:  I wake up at 6:00, brush my teeth, put on the warm robe, go downstairs and get my coffee, and head back up to the piano room to practice with Calvin.

This is a long way of saying that having a new robe for my birthday and having a very old stained holey completely shot robe lead me to put the old "white" robe in the goodwill pile.  I decided I better wash it.  Still not quite white.  More of a cappuccino color.  As I took it out of the dryer to put in the goodwill bag I balked.

Couldn't do it.

Got choked up and started sobbing.  Might be SAD but I think there is some authentic emotion here.  I put the robe against my face. I thought about the literally hundreds--no thousands--of hours I've spent practicing with that kid in that robe.  Half asleep with an IV drip of coffee, but still there. I thought about that kid resting his head on my lap to cuddle and take a break.  It also occurred to me that even a very poor person probably might not want my holey cappuccino colored robe but I moved through that emotion pretty quickly.

I stashed the robe back in a drawer.  Maybe next year I'll be ready.

Then I thought about all the children's books on my shelves.  Why did I buy so many children's books?  Did I think my children would be little forever?  I think I really did.  We need this investment in picture books for the future of the Kotrba household. . .  not.  I thought early childhood would last forever. I sorted through but there wasn't one in ten that I could put on the pile.

What is it with me????

It's not the robe and it's not the books, it's the child. The time we invested with the child.  The hours and days and weeks and years with the child. Like the precious Velveteen Rabbit--the books and the robe have become real. They are not holey, they are holy.

So excuse my language--but screw the whole house list.   I'm keeping my robe.  Even if it sits taking up space in a drawer for the next ten years before it finally moves on to where robes nobody needs go.  It's real.  If I look out the window I might see it hopping around in the yard, cappuccino colored and full of holes, but real.