03/05/2025
I am sat in a heap of your old clothes, sorting them into charity bags. I've hung on and hung on, but the time is now.
It's silly really because it's just clothes. But it's not, you know. Because every other item I pick up is imbued with so much of YOU at certain stages.
Strangely, it's not the babygrows that I'm struggling to part with. For some reason, it's specifically the age 3-4 stuff. Those trendy little jeans. The Paw Patrol t-shirt. That Paddington dressing gown. All the comfy, softest joggers I could find. The first of your clothes to be labelled with your name, when you started nursery. The pants. Oh, the little pants you would refuse to wear.
Three. What is it about three? We went through a lot together at three. But goodness me, you were adorable at three. Did they design it to be that way? Make you at your cutest at the exact point I had the least capacity to appreciate it.
Three. You are double that age now. All the toddler chub gone. You've long moved on. Yet, here I am, still stuck back there, in all the previous chapters of you.
And so the clothes, they will go. But the memories I’ll keep, flat-packed in my mind, ready to make space for new ones.
Because no doubt, a few years from now, I'll be looking back and thinking: Six. He was never lovelier than when he was Six.
Art by Yarn Birdy
Words by Mother Truths
Taken from my new book...
'STRETCHED: All the feels from second-time motherhood'
Available to buy worldwide: https://linktr.ee/mother_truths
