Seasons of Love

Way back in April, when the end of year performances, presentations, and celebrations were just starting at my kids’ schools, I sat and watched my daughter’s school choir sing the most beautiful rendition of “Seasons of Love” from Rent. It was hard to hold back the tears. Being the masochist that I am, I continued to play the song on repeat in the car for days after seeing the performance, so now the song is etched into my brain, the lyrics popping up every time I have a quiet moment.

Fast forward to this past week, where I found myself sitting on the floor of my basement, surrounded by bins of “supplies” I have amassed over the seventeen years I’ve been a mom. We’re officially through needing crayons, stickers, and plastic lacing and chunky beads. We don’t have a use for construction paper, kid-safe scissors, or glitter glue anymore. The jury is still out on the diamond painting kits (we’ve progressed to gluing sparkles directly onto things like school novels and rubber ducks ?!?) but I digress. The last seventeen years of our life as a family could be measured in used up markers, left over bits of long-ago completed craft kits, and tiny bits of glitter if you were to count according to the detritus surrounding me.

I’ve held on tight to all this leftover “stuff” of their childhood – worried that we’d be stuck at home again, the shadow of covid lingering long, needing “nostalgic” entertainment, too sad to let go of the wonderful times we’ve had as a family with little ones, and not yet ready to face what comes next. I’ve also held on to it as physical evidence of the lives that we had, the people we were, the stages we went through as individuals, and as a family. But time has a funny way of marching on. And so, I am slowly, and a bit emotionally, getting to the business of letting go of the stuff of season that has been.

What remains, after the donations have been made, the garage and recycling taken to the dump, the remaining artifacts sorted and stored appropriately is, just like the song says, the love. We will all “remember the love”, and each and every one of the “seasons of love” that we had growing up together.

But, as the song lyrics tell us “the story never ends”, so while I am letting go of the chapter that has been, I’m also feverishly working on plans for the next chapter . . . plans that are rooted in love, because the only way I want to even think about measuring my life is in seasons of love.

PS. While on a family trip to New York last week, my daughter and I had the chance to visit a gorgeous new needlepoint store – it appears we’re replacing the toddler crafts with something a little more “mature” – as we left the store with a bulging bag full of all the supplies we need for our new hobby.