the mud

I walk past the open door of his room at least 3 times every day. The chaos that covered the bedroom floor is now neatly tucked, rolled, and tightly packed into plastic bins he bought himself this time from Target. It's a lifetime of memories of his own, a half lifetime of memories of mine. He wants to throw away a bunch of the stained and threadbare t-shirts that are from high school and college. He wore them painting and working out he says. He wore them to crew and hockey and "Mom, they're disgusting." He is moving on. But I want them. To me, these are the fondled memories that I treasure. T-shirts, hundreds it seems, that say HTAA and The Prep and Go Irish. They have been dripped on and ripped, spilled on and spat on, but they remind me of his baby blanket, now tucked up in the attic in a bin much like the ones he is now filling up; a baby blanket with spit-up stains and holes that he made while dragging that thing around the house and sucking on it as he fell asl