When I was a little girl, I had a sweater that I loved. It was pink with a little bear on it, and it was so soft. Eventually I outgrew it and I remember crying when my mom was pulling things together to give away. For some reason, she let me keep it. She said I could save it so that if one day I had a little girl, she could wear it.
So it went into storage and when I left home for college, my mom was cleaning out and made me take much of my storage with me. I had to decide what I really wanted to keep as memorabilia of my childhood, and what wasn’t that important, because there wasn’t much storage space available. The pink sweater, however, made the cut.
Last week I finally got Knut to pull my boxes out of storage in the garage, and the kids and I have been having fun as I show them all of the things I had when I was a little girl.
Silje has been looking through my post card collection, my coins from around the world, and of course, my old dolls.
It’s still a bit big for her, but I think this sweater will get some love this winter. For some reason, this gives me so much joy.
Here’s one of the oddest collections I bet you’ll ever see. It’s my McDonald’s cheeseburger wrapper collection. In every country I’ve ever been to, I’ve had a cheeseburger at McDonald’s (except Mexico…I’ve never been to a McDonalds when I’ve been down there). Yes, I know I’m weird. Shown here are wrappers from Canada, New Zealand, Philippines, and Hong Kong. New Zealand is my favorite because it has a little kiwi bird under the big M. Canada has a maple leaf under the M, and the Philippines and Hong Kong were just plain. Knut was surprised that English is printed on all of them.
And this is my sweatshirt I made with Candy. When our family moved to Phoenix when I was in 5th grade, I remember having a tough time making friends for awhile. Our church had a pal/gal program, where girls were paired with women to get together in a mentoring relationship. My pal was Candy, and Candy was a seamstress, and crafter extraordinaire. I had an interest in those things, so she just took that and ran with it. Whenever we got together, we just did crafts. I made my dress with Candy for my Aunt’s wedding.
One afternoon that we were together, Candy gave me a lesson in fabric painting. She did the bunny on this sweatshirt, and I did all the hearts and stamps. It’s a horrid looking ugly sweatshirt, but I can’t seem to let myself give it up. I used to think it was pretty cool. Candy didn’t talk to me about Christ, and we didn’t do a Bible study or anything “spiritual.” Still, she poured time into me at a time when I really needed that, and kindled my love for sewing.
As we keep digging, we’ve found the sheepskin from New Zealand, my huge shell from the Philippines, yearbooks, pictures, pictures, more pictures…I love walking down memory lane.
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