The Drawer of Shame
What’s in yours?
“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!” The voice came out of my terrified body in a shout rather than a question. I had no control of it.
You see, my daughter is nose deep in the top middle drawer of my dresser. She can’t be there. I mean, that drawer holds more parenting secrets than I wish to reveal; not today, not ever. It’s like… a parenting drawer of shame.
In it are all the lost teeth of all three of my children. Not labeled, of course. Because I swore, I’d remember each one when I retrieved them from under their pillows. Each one, so much a milestone, so much a celebration worthy of a silver dollar in the beautifully quilted pillow my mother had made for each one of them. A ritual. A rite of passage. Each tooth.
Now, sitting in my drawer like a stockpile paying homage to the scores of a serial killer, they seem creepy. Still, I keep them. (Please tell me I’m not alone. Sigh.)
In that drawer are also ALL the letters to Santa. I couldn’t bear to part with those. I’d successfully kept the myth going through most of their respective childhoods. Too well, perhaps. It was an 8th-grade teacher that broke the news to my middle son, who said, when he mentioned he couldn’t wait for Santa to arrive, “You’re going to high school next year, you don’t still believe in Santa, do you?” That was a rough Christmas. Just thinking about it makes me want to re-read that particular letter. (Oh gosh, please don’t judge my son. He was just a big kid, after all. Still is. Sigh.)
I have to get my daughter out of that drawer before seeing the teeth, the letters, and OH! She can’t find the photos I insisted my husband take of me nursing my firstborn son. I mean, so many lovely photographs exist of nursing mothers, and the feeling I had nourishing from my body the little love that God gave me was so fascinating to me at first. I wanted to capture the moment, so I’d never forgotten it. The thing is, my husband’s photography skills didn’t quite capture all the feels I wanted to remember, and twenty years later, those photos look a little, well, pedophiliac. Gross. Still, I keep them. (Now I’m going to ask you not to judge me. Sigh. Blame it on postpartum insanity. That’s a thing, right?)
My daughter turns to look at me, giving me no clue as to whether or not I am too late. Her absent stare provides me with no clue as to… oh SHOOT… as to whether or not I’d also put my vibrator in that drawer when I last tried to hide it.
I don’t think I did. I probably should have. If I was going to have a drawer of secrets, all the secrets should be within and not sprinkled around my bedroom like jimmies on a soft-serve ice cream cone.
My daughter jars me out of my naked fear of exposure. “Gosh, mom, chill. I’m just looking for a safety pin. Isn’t this where you keep them?”
“NO, THAT IS NOT WHERE I KEEP THEM!” I cross the room in the awkward silence of my fears and manage to shut the drawer without pinching her fingers. I’m taking it as a win for today.
Do you have a drawer of shame? And if you do… what’s in it?
