<\/p>\nLet me tell you the story of a humble, black laundry marker and the many journeys we’ve been on together. <\/p>\n
In October 2005, I was still too nervous about my pregnancy to invest in maternity clothes. We were just coming up on the 12-week mark (which happened to land on our 5-year anniversary), and I was still checking our baby’s heartbeat every day with the “doppler heart monitor”:http:\/\/storkradio.com\/ we had rented. Plus, I was still fitting into most of my pants, especially if I held the buttons together with a rubber band.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
At some point that month, I must have told Nicole (Benjamin and Ella’s mom) about my pregnancy. She immediately asked: “Do you want to borrow my maternity clothes?” I was very excited to find some pants that really fit comfortably, especially without the commitment of buying them (can you say “superstitious”:\/news\/2006\/jinx\/?). Right around the same time, we visited our friends Rich and Kathrin, who also were delighted to loan me an enormous bag of maternity clothes. Luckily, Jon was happy to carry all the bags and boxes of clothing around to protect me in my delicate condition.<\/p>\n
p{color:gray}. Photo: We even borrowed swaddling cloths. This one was especially awesome. (That’s Lucy at about 10 days old. We can hardly believe she was ever really this tiny.)<\/p>\n
So, what does any young, pregnant woman need who has been loaned two separate, borrowed wardrobes of maternity clothes? A laundry marker, that’s what! Making a small initial inside each garment would protect me from going nuts trying to remembers whose was whose.<\/p>\n
That marker was surprisingly hard to find, believe it or not. I ended up settling for a super-duper permanent Sharpie — not actually labeled “laundry marker,” but I figured it would be indelible enough to withstand many washings.<\/p>\n
From that point on, my laundry marker and I have been thick as thieves. For months on end, he might be secreted away in my pen box. But at the right moment, there he is to connect clothes with their owners — whether big, tent-like maternity clothes that were the only ones to fit in the final few weeks of Lucy’s underwater surfing; tiny pink preemie clothes that were the only ones to fit Lucy in her first days; or piles and piles of 3-6 month clothes that fit Lucy for 3-8 months (that slim little thing).<\/p>\n
And then something new happened.<\/p>\n
How proud I was on the day that I could mark my _own_ “B” on maternity clothes to loan out to Jane, pregnant for the second time after a long-ago miscarriage and a quick-as-lightning adoption. “B”s continued to be required for the mounds of tiny, pink clothes we sent over when Jane’s daughter was eventually born.<\/p>\n
This evening, I sorted, stacked, and drew an “H” on a big pile of 6-12 month clothes on loan from Melody and Joel. They brought them over last August, when I could hardly imagine Lucy growing out of anything while being nourished only by my seemingly lean breastmilk. (She sure showed us!)<\/p>\n
“And so, Laundry Marker, what is it you’d like to say to us? What meaning lies within you? Why all the big capitals on tiny labels?”<\/p>\n
“To remind you of hope,” says Laundry Marker, “hopes for healthy pregnancies, growing babies, expanding families and expanding waistlines. Not only your hope for the families you share with, but your own hope — for another pregnancy, another child, another round of infant insanity. Why do you think you need me to write those initials on the clothes in the first place?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Let me tell you the story of a humble, black laundry marker and the many journeys we’ve been on together.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kids"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boydsnest.org\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}