Bins and purge

 It's that time of year again when I decide to drag down another bin from the attic and purge through my children's wardrobes.  Clothes migrate from dresser to bin, bin to dresser, household to household. Somehow I don't mind doing this as much for my older son, now six, since I know his clothes will be stored away and reopened like a time capsule in a couple of years or so.  I don't really have to let go of them just yet.  But for my youngest, they are harder to part with, like letting go of a piece of him, knowing he'll never go back to that age.  I tuck his green dumptruck shirt in the hand-me-down bag for the neighbors and notice the tiny holes in it from the day we rode off on our bikes to go blackberry picking and kept getting tangled up in the thorns, forgetting to move our bikes out of the road because we were so excited at discovering another hidden cluster and wanted to be the first to get there.  "Well, maybe we can hang onto this shirt just a little bit longer," I tell myself, sliding it back in his drawer.