Losing A Piece of My Childhood...

  Now that the Little Bayou House is devoid of all house guests, I decided it was as good of a time as any to sort through all of the Christmas decorations.  Although the things have all been down since two days after the holiday, they still were piled in huge mounds in the kiddos' play room.  With no grandlittles running about the place, it seemed to be an out of the way place to stash the junk...err...decorations until I had time to sort through them.  The packing and storing would be delayed a bit longer as I needed that sorting to be done.  While I am discarding a good many things, the sorting is more of a search for things.  On Christmas Eve, all of the antique stockings were hung on the mantel with care but, when time came to replace the vintage socks back in their nice box, care was thrown out the window.  Or perhaps a few of the stockings were tossed out that proverbial window.  When I finally gathered the stockings, three were missing.  THREE!  Three of the stockings had somehow become misplaced.  I searched the house to no avail and finally resorted to going through the bags of wrapping paper and boxes that were designated as trash. These had been stowed in the shed until we could haul them to the roadside. Thank goodness! Yay!  I found one wadded up with some old paper in a garbage bag.  Now, there were just two missing.  Thinking the trash was all sorted, I returned to the house only to hear Son tell me that he had already taken six bags of the trash to the road....the day after Christmas! Oh, no.  I had a sinking feeling that my stockings had already made their way to the dump.

  Today's search was no help.  Nary an antique stocking was to be found packed in with the decorations.  I know most folks will shrug their shoulders and say that the things were old anyway but that is not how I feel.  These were part of my childhood.  Of the two that are still missing, one was an extra one and the other just happened to be my very own stocking as a child.  It is gone and another piece...another memory cannot be replaced.  I was so happy to have the stockings as most everything from my childhood had burned in the fire that ravaged our first home here on the Bayou.  When Mom handed me the stocking, it was not merely a piece of cloth, it was a tie to my memories of long ago.  At least, I still have my brothers' stockings as they asked if I would keep them all together.  "It is like it used to be." they both said. "It is like when we were all together as a family. Hang the stockings for us."  Now...little sister has no stocking.  It makes me sad.  It also makes me sad that no one really cares.....