My mother once told me that when I was small, sometimes she would find my little things lying around that had not been put away before I went to sleep, after she came downstairs. An open book maybe, a crayon (to this day pronounced “crown”), that had rolled halfway under the couch, a little wooden truck, with a popsicle stick tailgate and actual wooden wheels, that my father had made for me for my Barbies, parked in the “garage” under the coffee table, and that seeing these little reminders of me sometimes made her feel a little sad. “Traces of Love,” she and my father apparently called these things. I always liked that, and thought of it often when my children were little and I found the same sort of remnants strewn about the house, after it was finally quiet for the night.
As happy as I was to have a couple of hours of peace before I fell into bed, I would always feel a little sad too when I would see a little teacup under the radiator, and remember shamefully my annoyance hours earlier about being asked to have another tea party, always inexplicably with a blanket over our heads. Or, an orange Nerf gun dart under the pillows of the couch, having gotten wedged there after a shower of them sprayed across the living room. I always recalled too, how I only half listened to my daughter talk about her horse, while I prepared dinner. The other half of my mind was occupied with all the things I needed to remember for the next day; sign a permission slip, pack lunches, throw a load of laundry in the washer…Or how, as I read to my son I might have skipped a page or two, eager to have some time to myself.
So, when the cries of, “I’m thirsty! I’m not tired! I’m scared! I have to pee!” finally subsided, and the house took on that late night, half-asleep hushed feeling, I would usually take a minute to mentally acknowledge the things I wished I had done differently that day, before I joined my husband on the couch. Looking around at their little things, always helped me refocus and remember that no matter how tired I was at the end of the day, I had been blessed with these little people to mold and shape the best way I knew how, so that someday they could appreciate traces of love from their own little ones.
