I'm Going to Want To Remember This...

It was an ordinary day.

I was buried under a mountain of laundry that needed folding, thanks to my notorious habit of washing and drying laundry then putting it in a basket or pile to fold on another day. Folding laundry is on the list of tasks I like to do the least, though that may be partially due the fore-mentioned bad habit that makes this not just a chore, but a huge ordeal.

Oh well. That's not really the point anyway.

The point is, I was putting some of my daughter's laundry in her dresser drawers when I caught a glimpse of her dresser. I see this piece of furniture every day, but don't always actually look at it. But on this day the brightly colored bottles of nail polish and handmade wands and the cheerleader doll and beaded lamp and all other evidences that a pretty-in-pink four year old princess lives in this room made me stop and stare and soak it in.

And I thought to myself, "I'm going to want to remember this."

I thought of how soon that dresser will be covered in different older-girl things, and how those items will change through the years, and how the evidence will one day reveal that a little girl no longer resides here, but instead a young woman.

But for today the girl in the room with the pink walls still has a basket of hair bows and barrettes that she wears in her long, silky hair and loves the princesses on her lamp and thinks that one day she may marry the little boy in the picture in the pink frame, and that if she does he is going to wear a red and black checked shirt to the wedding. She still plays with the dollhouse on the other side of the room and is constantly changing into something from the purple dress up bin in the closet. She is still sugar and spice and youth and innocence, just as the items on her white dresser reflect. She is still my little girl.

So for an extra moment the laundry sat and waited as I grabbed my camera and took a picture of her dresser piled with things so that I, and she, will someday remember.