Day 34 - Train Set and Quilt (Throw)

Melissa and I have been getting the Christmas boxes out and the kids have been begging for the tree to be set up.  It's not up yet, but surely tomorrow we will get to to it.  The box it's in is sitting on the living room floor - so that's progress.  My first throw away for Day 34 was easy.  Years ago we bought a toy train that is meant to be set up under the Christmas tree so that the little engine and two or three cars would make loops around the edge of the tree skirt.  This was one of those rookie parent mistakes!  You think, "Oh, our little toddler will just love it."  And then you're surprised at how much your little toddler LOVES it ... and how he treats the things he loves.  And how difficult it is to get the engine and all the cars to connect and to line up on the track straight enough to actually move every time your toddler decides to pick up the pretty train (once every 39 seconds).  And it doesn't take long before your toddler has loved that train to death (less than one Christmas season).  So the only solution is to pack it away each year with the Christmas stuff, pull it out each December, look at it and think, "I'm going to fix that thing someday now that the kids are old enough to leave it alone," and then pack it away for another year.  This year I simply aknowledged reality and the train is now in the trash can. 

The second Throw was much more difficult.  A week or so ago, Melissa cleaned out the laundry room.  She brought me a quilt from the storage cabinet and asked if I wanted to keep it. 

"My Grandma Gross made that for me.  I used it throughout my childhood.  Of course I want to keep it."

That blanket kept me warm many winter nights in my drafty bedroom on East Hendricks Street.  It's really the only thing I have that reminds me of Grandma.  So for the past week it sat on the arm of the couch and each time I looked at it, I imagined storing it away for my kids as a memento of their Great Grandma Gross from South Dakota.  But the sad reality of life slowly crept up on me and I realized that my four kids simply never knew their Great Grandma Gross and they never will really know her ... at least not on this side of heaven.  And if I keep the blanket for them, would it provide any sort of true connection for them?  Will it help them know the feisty, lively, sweet woman herself?  All it will prove to them is that they had a Great Grandma who once sewed together a musty smelling quilt ... with holes in it (now that I look at it closely). 

It's not really that attractive either. 

Into the trash!