Goldfish Dust

Recognize these little guys?

Come on, you know the stuff – the neon orange powder all over the house. The direct result of Goldfish crackers that have been stomped on, driven over with toys, crushed beneath your couch cushions, and staining those little sticky fingers (and your white duvets).

On one particular morning that I was feeling beyond frustrated with the ‘dust’, I swept it up, I wiped the stains off, and I thought to myself – these things are the worst. But then something happened.

So this is heavy (and possibly triggering for some of you), but on that same day I had a perspective flip worth sharing. I met a woman through my candle business who I discovered had lost her 6-year old child to a rare disease the year before. She shared with me that a part of her coping strategy included burning candles every night, and she liked using mine. It was a a beautiful compliment and a truly brief encounter with her, but it was so full of feeling. The camaraderie of the motherhood experience we shared in that moment has really stayed with me. I truly cannot fathom the grief of that loss, and even now my throat tightens at the thought if it. This was one of those times in my life when there was a before, and an after. And there was no returning to the ‘before’ after this encounter.

Ever since, I’ve shifted my way of thinking about my children growing up as something to mourn, or of their childhood passing by each day as being something I’ll miss. I try to shake this old, and somewhat artificial sadness and turn to the joy in it – the joy of looking forward to a life growing up and growing old together. I no longer say things like, “Oh I wish they would stay little forever”, or “Piper, stop growing – be my little girl forever”, because for parents who lose their children, those babies and kids are frozen in time forever at that age. Those parents will never know the joy of watching their kids lose all their teeth, fall in love, or start families of their own.

I don’t lament the passing of time anymore, and instead I am grateful for it and I look forward to knowing my daughter as a woman, and my son as man. The amazing people they will become as I age and wrinkle into a happy little prune.

So here’s the moment it hit me, the one that inspired me to write this post. I opened the family photo book I made with Mimeo last year (an amazing way to capture all those memories stuck in your phone btw!) and I saw the pristine, white edging of a page smeared with that tell-all colour of orange, and a perfectly preserved fingerprint from my toddler’s little hand. I thought of that woman, I caught my breath, and I just took a thoughtful beat. Then, instead of wiping the smear off to keep the page in it’s perfect form, I grabbed a Sharpie marker from my desk and after carefully circling that little fingerprint, I wrote a note to mine and Remy’s future selves:

“Grow little man, but don’t forget about our years with the goldfish dust”.