An Ode to a Crib
I don’t want to say goodbye.
It’s not you, it’s me—and the relentlessness of time.
We’ve grown apart. Or rather we’ve done the growing, you’ve stayed the same.
You’ve been consistent—constant and reliable. You’ve been steadfast, when our our life kept rolling from one ‘phase’ into the next.
Our first swaddled bundle was brought home and lain in your lap.
You bore witness to our clumsy parenting initiation—to watch us learn by doing.
Your arms would would eventually bear the scars of tiny teething tooth marks. Your rows of slats would grow sticky with spit-up and lunch remnants. Bouncing footsie feet tested your durability.
You were there to hold my squalling infant when I needed to walk away. The baby that wouldn’t soothe.
Through the colicky midnight hours, when the screaming wouldn’t subside and their tears mixed with mine—you were there as a soft place for my red-faced sweaty babe to lie in safety while I sank down behind the door in a puddle of inadequacy begging God to make them stop.
In stoic silence you listened to me cuss the crib sheets as I attempted to stretch a dry replacement in the dark of a middle of the night soak through.
Did you also hear the whispered 𝘐 𝘭𝘰𝘷𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶’𝘴? With the same sailor’s mouth I sang lullabies and read books and peek-a-booed until I had no more left. I tried so hard.
You know that. You were my witness for the beauty and the ugly. I would keep you forever if I could.
Except, resistance is futile. They always eventually find their inner acrobat, or simply grow as they are supposed to and suddenly find from fuzzy hair to footsie feet, they no longer fit. Though you can hold a grown adult rendered into fetal position (ask me how I know).
The “big kid bed” introduces a new dance. A dance that includes the back and forth of pitter patters down the hall and begs and bribes that they stay put.
So this is my ode to a crib. An inanimate object that became a great ally. This is my begrudging goodbye. A melodramatic clinging to wooden leg—
Parting is such sweet sorrow.
And in this case, I hold the sweet and the sorrow in each hand—along with the Allen wrench for disassembly.
