Just a box of toys

This past week has been one full of anticipation and excitement for me as we prepared to welcome our daughter, son in law, and granddaughter who would be visiting from New York for several days.  Erika is now 9 months old and with her living so far away we have missed so many changes as well as quality cuddle time with her.  I am excited, we are excited!!  Saturday could not arrive quickly enough.

On Thursday I asked my husband to bring down the box of toys we had stored away for "someday".  He looked carefully in the storage space that flanks either side of our bonus room and found nothing that resembled a box large enough to contain those saved toys.  He came down and told me they weren't there.  I returned to the bonus room with him to conduct another search knowing he had missed them, praying he had missed them.  The box contained special toys tucked away for grandchildren someday.  There was the Fisher Price A-Frame house picked up a garage sale by my mother when Megan was little.  There was the Fisher Price rolling ball with the carousel animals that rocked and chimed as it was played with.  There was the Tudor style Fisher Price House, the school bus containing all of the wooden little people,  the garage and cars with the lift that moved up and down when the crank was turned and there was the barn and silo with all of the animals.  There were other toys and lots of wooden little people and there were countless memories of times our children played with those toys. They were tucked safely away years ago to wait until we needed them.  We wanted to share those toys with our grandchildren.  Some of those toys packed away so long ago would be great for Erika to play with now and so I had to search again.  They had to be there!  Jay surely was wrong.  We searched and as he said, no box of toys.  Maybe they were in the attic.  I held my breath and we looked but again came up empty.  Jay commented more than once that I looked upset and I was.  Part of something special was gone and I had no words adequate enough to explain how I was feeling and then the tears came, streaming down my face and dropping silently onto my shirt.  Jay didn't know what to say.  He tried to comfort me but I was lost.  Perhaps I could replace a few of the toys, and yes, they would be similar but they would not be the same as the toys I knew now were mistakenly donated to Goodwill when we cleaned out the storage areas several years ago.  It was no one's fault, it was simply a terrible accident.

I called Megan and told her about her A-Frame House and all of the other toys that were gone and she understood my sadness and disappointment.  I played on EBay as we talked only to discover they had several Fisher Price A-Frame house on their listings.  Somehow that fact made both of us feel better.

Megan, Judson, and Erika arrived on Saturday and there were toys for her to play with and she was happy but a part of me still watches her and feels my heartstrings tug when I think about what we lost.  It was not just a box of toys!