The Crib

Today I packed up the crib and put it in the back of the RAV.  I am ready to drive to the dump.  This is a drop-side crib, and they have been deemed unsafe.  It is illegal to donate or sell one.  They cannot be posted to Craigslist.  Drop-side cribs must go directly to the dump.

Jack and I bought the crib seventeen years ago this summer.  It had rounded trim headboard with pear wood stain.  It was a light brown, with a slight hint of red.  Picture a darker version of honey.

We put the crib in the apartment on Belden next to our bed.  We set it up a few weeks before Ada's due date, just in case she came early.  We didn't know that she wouldn't come home.

I set up a plush mobile of the solar system on one rail, and a little Tigger animal on the other.  There was a little stuffed cow next to Tigger, and when you pulled its tail, it played music.  My boss at the time gave me her Laura Ashley crib bedding, a gender neutral lavender with a Hey Diddle Diddle theme.  We had a light yellow fleece blanket with a satin trim ready for the baby.

After Ada died, we packed up the crib, and put it in the storage locker in the basement of our apartment building.  Almost a year later, we moved to St. Louis.  The movers came and checked out our stuff.  "Hey," the guy said with a smile.  "I didn't know you had a baby!"

"We don't."

It took him a second to process, and his face dropped.  I imagined him thinking, Why would they have a crib if they don't have a baby...  I could see the wheels turning in his mind as he connected the dots.

The movers at the other end of the move were much more reserved than the ones in Chicago, and surprisingly, they didn't ask about the crib.  They might have figured it was a gift from a friend or passed on from family before the move.  These guys didn't see it sitting in our storage locker.

One year after we moved to St. Louis, Clair Adele was born.  She slept in her sister's crib.  The Boy slept in a crib we borrowed from Jack's boss, and then our family crib became the Boy's after Clair Adele moved to a regular bed.

I kept the crib so long, partially as birth control.  I figured I wouldn't have more kids as long as I had the crib in the basement, and I was right.  I feared as soon as I got rid of the crib, I would get pregnant.  Keeping the crib in the basement has served its purpose in that sense.  While I tell myself I kept the crib as birth control, I know that isn't fully true.  Perhaps I would have passed it on to a friend or relative when the Boy was done with it, but I couldn't give them Ada's crib.  Even thought I thought it was a beautiful crib, I am not sure anyone pregnant woman would want it.  They might think it was jinxed.  I wouldn't really blame them, even though Ada's death had nothing whatsoever to do with the crib.

Even though this crib had many years of happy use, seventeen years is a long time to hold on.  Ada would be driving now, and my forty-sixth birthday is coming up this week.  Time for the crib to go.