Have I died and gone to Nordstrom?

As any parent knows, kids grow up so fast.  By this we usually are marking our own emotional milestone tied to their physical one...like kindergarten, middle school dance, prom, high school graduation or just the fact that you look up and you are...literally...looking up at them.  Or their shoe size is now bigger than yours.  They are emotional milestones that have a physical component.  We mark the seasons by looking at the trees and we mark our lives by looking at our kids.

Most of us are able to properly outfit our children as they grow.  But some kids are not so lucky.  They come to school with their toes bunched up in too small shoes, or wearing shorts when it's freezing outside.  Many don't have a coat or even a long sleeve hoodie. School nurses need clothes to distribute to children who are inappropriately dressed for school for whatever reason, be it bad judgement or simple lack.


In more affluent schools, the lost and found runneth over.  You'd be surprised the items that get tossed into lost and found and never picked up.  How does a child lose an entire pair of shoes?  Dozens of gloves (mates included!), knit caps, scarves, hoodies and jackets remain behind when the school year is over.   In the more affluent schools, these include designer brands such as Polo, Gap, and others.  It's a satellite branch of Nordstrom.

Last Saturday the ladies and I washed, dried, folded and sorted the lost and found items from one school alone.  There were 244 items, all of which were very nice.   Every kid in that school must have lost at least one item. 

I usually hate laundry, but watching the fluffy sweaters and clean coats come tumbling out of the dryer, I imagined a child standing there with outstretched hands. 

I wished I could hand it over warm from the dryer, with a hug.   They grow up so fast.

Abby