By Cara Stolen
@carastolen

Our living room floor is covered in clothes and plastic totes. It has been for a few days now. Okay, more like a week. Ten days? You get the picture. By this point, clothes have migrated down our hallway toward the bedrooms. I think there’s a tote in the playroom being used as a boat. But this isn’t some sort of procrastinated laundry situation. The clothes strewn from one end of the house to the other aren’t from the dress-up box or a recent shopping spree, either. They’re hand-me-downs. 

About twice a year—usually spurred on by the start of school or a particularly aggressive growth spurt—I dedicate a weekend to swapping out my kids’ clothes. It starts in the little room off our detached garage/shop I refer to as “The Bunker.” What used to be a meat cooler has now become my own personal Goodwill, and it houses an industrial storage rack, a cobweb-covered Bowflex, and tote upon tote of hand-me-downs. I sort through the plastic boxes, bring in the ones I think will fit the kids, and then bribe them with an episode of Super Why to try on all their “new” clothes. I write down what’s missing from their wardrobes—making note of who needs socks and t-shirts or a new winter coat this year—before reversing the process by boxing back up the clothes they’ve outgrown, re-labeling the totes, and carrying them back out to The Bunker. 

It’s an imperfect system. Sometimes I miss a tote in the stack and find unused, already-outgrown hand-me-downs the following year. But, usually, it works. 

Until this year. 

This year, weeks away from the baby’s first birthday, I was overwhelmed by the whole ordeal. There were too many clothes. Too many kids. Too much whining about the try-on process. So, I made careful piles, turned on Super Why, and vowed to pick up where we left off tomorrow. But then tomorrow came, and I was still daunted by the task. The day after that, I made a little progress but still drug my feet. Now, it’s been a week plus, and the whole project is off the rails. Piles have fallen over, the too-long pants have mixed with the highwaters, and did I mention the tote in the playroom? Our house has been taken over by hand-me-downs. 

The mess is driving me crazy. It’s even bothering my clutter-immune husband, Levi, who threatened to cancel the camping trip we’re supposed to be packing for if the house wasn’t restored to order. 

But still, I find myself walking right past the three pairs of pants in the hallway, sleeping bags draped over my arms.

It will be weeks before I realize my hesitation has nothing to do with the clothes. 

***

I grew up loving the idea of a big family. An only child myself, I watched my dad and his seven siblings together and wondered how it might feel to go to sleep at night in the bunk below my older sister, across the room from my younger sister, and down the hall from a room full of brothers. I observed the shared language of their childhood, the raucous laughter and overflowing Christmas dinner table, the way they teased one another (and pushed each other’s buttons), and I dreamed of a childhood without the loneliness or isolation I so often felt. 

Unlike some couples I know, Levi and I never had a specific number of kids we wanted. We just knew we wanted kids, plural, and I guess we thought we’d figure it out as we went. But, somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, unspoken and unacknowledged, more a whisper than a full-blown dream, lived that childhood longing for a big family. 

Like so many childhood dreams illuminated by the glaring light of adulthood, parenting has been, let’s just say, different than I imagined it to be. More rewarding and delightful, yes. But also more chaotic, expensive, and consuming. So while Levi likes to joke that he’d have a whole “litter” of kids, after having three kids in six years I now think parenting eight kids seems a little insane. On the other hand, if we already have three, what’s one more? Aside from the fact that we’d no longer fit comfortably in our pickup truck and two of our kids would need to share a room, would four kids be that much different than three? 

***

I was about four months pregnant when I brought home my first box of hand-me-downs. The Rubbermaid tote my friend, Stacy, carried out to my truck was filled with full-panel jeans, nursing tanks, and t-shirts with ruching on the side. A few months later, after an afternoon hike together, I sprawled on the floor of her living room and watched as she carried tote after tote down the rickety, pull-down ladder to her attic. They were filled with crib sheets, receiving blankets, tiny onesies, and footie pajamas. There were even burp rags she had sewn herself when she was pregnant with her first. Together, we opened them one-by-one, spreading their contents in the warm squares of sunlight her skylights cast on the carpet. 

She kept a few token items as mementos, but, for the most part, I was welcome to take anything I wanted. They were moving on, she said. Ready to move past the baby stage and onto the next phase of parenting. 

Standing on the threshold of the phase she was leaving, I didn’t think to ask her how she knew she was done having babies. I didn’t think to ask her how she felt about the hand-me-downs she so generously passed onto me. 

I didn’t have feelings about starting my own hand-me-down collection. When my firstborn son, Royce, outgrew a piece of clothing—size NB—for the first time, I went to the walk-through closet of our tiny rental home and pulled out the tote of 0-3M clothes I’d stored there. Then I laid the tiny, too-small pair of green-and-white striped jammies with monkey faces on the toes into an empty plastic tote without much fanfare. Because I was just putting them away for a while. Storing them for next time.  

And as long as I was storing them for next time, I didn’t have to think about the day when there probably wouldn’t be another next time. 

***

There isn’t anything special about the Kirkland baby wipes box in my hands—its tape has been sliced with a pair of scissors and its corners are folded over on each other to keep its contents tucked inside. Really, there isn’t anything terribly special about its contents, either. They’re just clothes.  

I never expected to have feelings about the toddler-sized leggings and dresses my daughter has outgrown. I never thought I’d cry as I handed off a box of hand-me-downs. Yet, I find myself swiping at tears beneath my sunglasses as I carry the box toward another mom at preschool drop-off whose daughter is a few years younger than mine.

I probably don’t need to tell you that the feelings I’m overcome with aren’t about the clothes. They’re about the memories and snapshots those clothes carry. They’re about my kids growing and changing and how it’s all just so much more fleeting than I imagined or could grasp it would be. They’re about the fact that I’m standing on the other side now, where I once saw my friend Stacy stand. 

Am I ready to step over the next threshold? Ready to move past babies and toddlers forever? Can I accept the fact that I’ll never feel the weight of a newborn sleeping on my chest, or smell that intoxicating baby smell, or settle into the rocking chair to breastfeed ever again? 

For the past eight years I have said yes to any and all hand-me-downs. I’ve carefully washed, folded, and stored my own kids’ outgrown clothes. And with each subsequent pregnancy I’ve pulled out those totes, washed each tiny item, and dressed my new baby in clothes their older siblings (and friends’ kids before them) wore. 

We’re ready to move on to the next phase of parenting. Ready to go on a camping trip—a backpacking trip, really—with kids who can all walk, talk, use the outhouse, and sleep, not scream, through the night. It’s time for me to transition from the recipient of hand-me-downs to the giver of them, and the practical part of me is on board.

I texted a friend a few months ago to ask if she’d like the clothes my one-year-old son is outgrowing. I asked this mom at preschool if she’d like a few things for her daughter. My husband asked a friend of his whose wife is pregnant with their first if they wanted baby gear. They all, of course, said yes. But I’ve yet to follow through on any of it. I’m dragging my feet the way I did this summer when it was time to swap out my kids’ clothes, telling myself I’m daunted by the task, when, in truth, it’s the feeling of letting go that has me holding on. 

I always assumed I’d just know when I was done having babies. That I would feel a sense of completion; a kind of satisfaction with the size and dynamics of our family. In some ways, I do feel that way. But that whisper is still there, too. And the combined emotions—the contentment, the sadness, the anticipation, the longing—create a kind of heartache I don’t know how to name or confront. 

My voice catches a little as I hand over the cardboard box. I tell her I hope her daughter loves the dresses, and she makes a joke about her sister hoarding hand-me-downs that makes me laugh and helps clear the lump in my throat a little. But as I pull back out onto the highway for the 20-minute drive home, it forms again. I look in the tiny car seat mirror at my not-so-little baby—his face looking more toddler-like every day—and go ahead and let myself sob.  

Cara Stolen is a ranch wife and work-at-home mama of three who lives in rural Washington state. An avid runner and outdoor enthusiast, she loves exceptionally early mornings, pushing the limits of an acceptable day hike, and backpacking or horse packing with her husband, Levi. She believes words have the power to buoy us through the hardest of times, and hopes to make other mothers feel seen with hers. You can find more of her work on her website.

Photo by Jennifer Floyd.