My first pitch!

Poster paints. And the plastic basket they were corralled in, too.

Eight plastic bottles, each filled at least 3/4 of the way with still-liquid poster paints, left over from my kids' early art-making days: hand-delivered to the craft closet at church, for immediate use by actual little kids (who are not teens, like mine are now!).

Why would I want to hold on to them? Easy: 1) one day, who knows when, maybe we would need them to paint a poster. Right? 2) these paint bottles represent how prepared and creative I was as an elementary-school-aged kids' mom - uh huh!

Why should I let them go? Harder: 1) face it, the kids' poster-painting days are gone, gone with their squeaky voices and requests for bedtime stories. Sob! 2) can I still prove to myself and others that I am still a prepared and creative person? A good mom? Probably. . . even without hoarding a clever stash of art supplies.

Oddly, the hardest thing to let go of, in the end, was the little plastic basket that held the paint bottles. . . my brain said, "Come on, keep it! It's useful!" That basket wasn't connected to my bittersweet pangs about my kids' growing older, nor was it attached to the image of myself as a Good Momma. This little basket was tied, instead, to my practical side, industrious, thrifty, and good at finding uses for things. Oh, dear. Give it up! Let this little basket be what it needs to be right now: a very good holder of poster paint bottles.

And so my first pitch is complete!

Phew!

xo, LD