Goodbye to Clyde

Many years ago, Stuart and I stayed at a cute little hotel in the Texas Hill Country. Our room was all decked out in a western theme complete with a bull skull and horns on the wall. Being proud to live in Texas, I just loved the room and wanted to have a Texas-themed room in our house someday.

Stuart and I started to keep an eye out for bull skulls wherever we went. We shopped in the Hill Country. On a trip to Austin, we stopped in several shops but couldn't find just the right one. We shopped in the DFW area. While on a day trip exploring in East Texas, we happened upon a shop in Tyler that had a unique looking bull skull. It was way up high on the wall and although I liked it, I was tired and didn't feel like bothering with getting him down. But Stuart, being the dedicated husband that he is, could tell that I liked it and asked someone to help get it down. We brought home that bull skull and named him Clyde, for a silly little man that we met that day while visiting Gilmer.

Clyde stayed on the wall in our living room for many years. When Nicholas was an infant, he would often sleep in his pack and play in the living room. We would often find him staring up at Clyde and sometimes would even laugh a little as if they were sharing funny stories with each other. It was such a cute scene and it really left a lasting memory for me.

At some point last year I decided that I didn't want Clyde in our living room anymore. Although I still like the Texas-themed room, I just didn't want any dead stuff on the walls. We didn't take him down right away because we had worked so hard to find him. But then we got a new entertainment center that needed to go along the wall where Clyde lived so we had to take him down. He has spent quite a while in our attic since then.

Lately I've been cleaning things out of the house to make room for baby #2 and I ran across Clyde in the attic. Although I'm still very fond of Clyde, there just isn't any reason to keep him around so I've decided to sell him. Nicholas was a little sad to hear that I was getting rid of Clyde. I got a picture of the two of them together.



After I dropped Clyde off at the consignment store today, I felt so sad. I just kept thinking of baby Nicholas looking up and smiling at Clyde. I realized that to me, Clyde was a reminder of Nicholas as an infant and it was sad to get rid of him because of this.

I've experienced similiar feelings this week regarding all of his baby clothes. I have saved all of his clothing through the years so that we would be set if we had another boy. Now that we know we are having a girl, I won't be needing all of those little blue outfits with construction vehicles and fire trucks on them. So I plan to give them to a friend who just had a little boy. But the thought of getting rid of all of these little reminders of Nicholas as a baby is proving to be very difficult. I can't even bring myself to go through all the boxes yet. I get so sad everytime I start to do it. I just want to hang on to everything that reminds me of him as a baby and the various stages he has gone through.