Somewhere TAPS is playing.

Today is a sad day, somewhere Taps is playing.  I would never make light of the seriousness of that song, well I guess I sort of just did, but it is a sad day at my house.  Today, I made an adult decision that I had put off making for years.

Look at the picture above.  What do you see?  Most of y'all just see a pillow.  To me, I see history, my childhood- the past.  The pillow is one of my favorites I have ever had but that is not what is important.  To me, the pillowcase is the gem.  This pillowcase was once my brothers and by once I mean probably 15-20 years ago.  When Patrick got his first big boy bed (I cant remember the size of the bed) he got this set of sheets.  It was a black sheet with a gray pinstripe.  I never particularly liked the sheets but this pillowcase has been mine for years, like at least 7 or 8.  For that time period it is the only pillowcase I have used.  A few pillows have come and gone but the pillowcase has remained.  I lived in three different places, taken it on may vacations, and for awhile every night it helps me forget my problems.  It is faded, worn out, ugly, and now getting put out to pasture.

Brooke has tried to get me to get rid of it before, she has since stopped trying because she knows my attachment to it.  I can't explain it but it is a comfort thing.  I think maybe its because in some strange way it brings me back to one of the best times in my life was when I lived with my parents.  Something as a kid I said I would do forever, something Reagan says she is going to do forever.  Brooke and I lived there right after we got married (Mom and Dad did the same thing with Dad's parents) and there is just something always secure about going to your parents house.  Every time I spent the night there I knew that there would be fewer and fewer times to do so.  Life is precious, it is short, and it is numbered.  Now with bills, work pressures, getting old, families, etc- you always think fondly back of the time when you were safe with Mom and Dad.  No matter what.  Normally the longer you are away from things the more you forget the bad stuff.  Times in your life are generally never as good as you remembered them to be.  That isn't the case for my childhood or my parents.  In most cases it was the best and Mom and Dad did all the could.  I hope that I adequately relay to my kids how great their MaMaw and PawPaw were as parents to me.  I hope that I foster a similar environment for my girls so that they always feel safe, welcomed, loved, and fed, in my home.  Just the same way my parents did.

In the end, I hope that one day when my girls move out (it hurts to think about it at this point) they will take something with them- something they will have alongside of them - to remind them of home, their comfort, the love, of me (and their mom).  Probably wont be a pillowcase but sometimes a pillowcase is much more than something to cover your pillow. 

So next time we have a fire in the fireplace, I will retire this pillowcase in the proper Tim Ayers tradition.  I will throw it in the fire and watch it become one with the earth.