No one likes to be left behind, and especially not for trips. You just feel like you are missing something great when you get left behind for a trip (because you are). Sometimes it is just the pits to be left alone, and it is always the pits to miss someone you love and have them be far away.
Mom and Dad knew all of these things, but they also knew that for their sanity and happiness they would need to leave us kids behind and go on trips. So they did. I remember one particular trip, they started a tradition to ease our pain. They left us to gallavant about England, and I remember crying the night before they left because I was going to miss them so much. This is pre-trip pain. Can't be helped much. But then Mom showed me a surprise in her room.
A brown bag line up!
For each day that they would be gone there was a labeled brown bag. She told me that after school each day we could open the bag for that day. Suddenly I had something to look forward to each day she was gone. And something to prove that she remembered me. The things in the bags were just little things, like after school snacks or popcorn to eat with a movie that night. But it made it so much easier to be left behind.
Fast forward to yesterday. I went to visit our sister in law ATown. Our brother had left for four days and she was going to be alone. I walked in and saw a happy site. A brown bag line up!
Isn't that pretty cute and sweet of our brother. It just makes the pain of being left behind not so bad. :) I know you did this for your boys too when you went to Japan. I know I will do it for Baby J one day too.
Here's to the simple happiness inside a brown bag.
Love kk
That is the sweetest. Love that boy.
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