'...for when he moves, his house moves, too, and nothing can prevent it'

He poked his head in the door and asked me if I was sure, and honestly, I thought I was, so I lied.

"Completely," I told my husband. "Take it to the curb."

As soon as the door slammed shut behind him, I sat statue still for one, two, three, four, five seconds (I know it was exactly five because I counted each tick, forcing myself not to change my mind and go stop him) before I jumped up from the couch, dashed through the family room and the kitchen, then screeched to a halt at the front door window just as he was rounding the front of the house, dragging the Little Tykes turtle sandbox behind him. You think turtles move at a snail's pace? Not the case when my husband is leading the parade.

With a muffled thud, the sandbox came to rest at the curb amid an assortment of empty cardboard boxes, peg boards, and metal shelving, waiting to be picked over by the junk vultures. When my husband turned to venture back into the garage in what I hoped would be a sequel to his first successful release, Quest For Useless Shit We (Meaning You, Tool Man) Don't Need, he caught me watching from the window, so I smiled, barely, and lifted my hand up in what I imagined he'd take as a friendly gesture. A thumbs up that would encourage him to forage deeper where once a car fit for him to find more to throw out along with the sandbox.

But really? Really my wave was meant as a final salute to the turtle sandbox that's been (strike that now - HAD been) in our backyard for the last eight years. I thought I'd been ready to see it go. Honestly. But when I got up Saturday morning and raised the blinds to open the windows so I could hear the boys playing in the backyard and they could hear me yelling out to them to quit wrestling, stop touching him already, for the love of God didn't we already have this discussion yesterday, my eyes immediately fell on the perfectly round circle of dirt in the middle of the yard where the turtle had made it's home and, speaking of for the love of God, my heart filled with regret.

It's not that the boys have played in the turtle sandbox much over the last couple of years. Hell, it's not like the turtle sandbox had held it's primary ingredient for the last couple of years! But what it was (no longer is) was a link to my boys when they were little.

Little.

Little, little, little.

Like I want them to still be.

Little tykes, you might say.

But as they like to remind me by their actions if not necessarily their words, my boys aren't such little tykes anymore. The days when we'd tumble out into the backyard to uncover the sandbox and explore ended, really, last summer, when I spent more time reminding them the turtle's hard outer shell was there to cover the sand, not act as a springboard for their backyard gymnastics. We very rarely had tiny sand castles to build anymore. Less frequently were the least favorite Matchbox cars brought out to bust through elaborate sand dunes. The days of sifting through the grains in a quest for gold became fewer, and the imaginary restaurant where I'd watch two chefs stir pots with plastic shovels while placing orders for plates of spaghetti and slices of blueberry pie was closed down, a victim of either the economy or the health inspectors. By the time I told my husband to drag it to the curb last Friday, the turtle sandbox had become more a petri dish where the latest pandemic was likely brewing, and it's lid, split and faded, no longer wanted to heal after another last ditch duct tape surgery.

By next week, grass will be growing in the space where the turtle sandbox has (had) rested for years. My boys will race over it while in the midst of some new game, and perhaps they'll forget the days we spent kneeled around the turtle's innards while building elaborate systems of dams and rivers we filled with bucket after bucket of water from the outdoor spigot. That's OK, really. But I'm pretty sure I won't, because like a turtle's long lifespan, my memories of my no longer so little boys will remain, even if the turtle sandbox doesn't.

i got no car and it's breaking my heart

You might remember in May we bid farewell to the Little Tikes turtle sandbox that had been in our backyard about a year longer than my boys cared for it to be. The day after dragging it to the curb for a citywide clean sweep, my Tool Man purchased a bag of grass seed, intent on offering the 43" x 47" circle of barren land back to Mother Earth. I watched him that weekend, sprinkling the ground, imagining the moment was like New Year's Eve on Time Square for the ants and other insects dwelling in the dirt, the seed falling like ticker tape from the sky.

I'd hoped having grass growing there, emerald green blades bursting upward, would help me forget the fact that we'd tossed out a link to my childrens' not so very distant pasts, but over the summer, real rabbits replaced the plastic turtle in our yard, and those rabbits circled the area like pygmies around a boiling cauldron, the seeds serving as their version of the hapless jungle explorer tied and trussed and prepared to meet his doom. Four months later, the grassless circle where memories and sand castles were made is still the first sight my eyes land upon when I look out my bedroom window each morning. Quite honestly, it still makes me sad.

"The rabbits are a sign," I told Tool Man one evening after I'd counted eight of them sunning themselves in the yard, perhaps smoking fat cigars and downing shots of aged scotch after another seed feast. "You know what they say about rabbits. I think the rabbits want us to have another baby."

Tool Man rolled his eyes because he thinks that I think everything wants us to have another baby. He made me stop finding reasons to go to Target last week during their baby sale because I'd return home and sigh about how I must have just missed that day's shipment of adorable infants. "I think if you buy five, you get a free $5 Target gift card," I'd wistfully remark. "Perhaps I should see if they're issuing rain checks!" Needless to say, no baby.

And now no Wiggles Big Red Car taking up a corner of my family room. When I returned from one of those many Target trips last week, I walked into the house and was immediately taken aback by the wide open floor plan. "There's something different going on here," I deduced while Tool Man remained calm and quiet. "Did you vacuum while I was away?"

"I sold the Wiggles car," he said. Then there was silence. Then some more silence. Tumbleweeds released from the expanse of open land where once the Wiggles parked their Big Red Car next to the couch may have actually rolled between us. I was physically crestfallen. In the hour and a half I was gone, this man who never gets rid of anything up and sold the Wiggles car. "I wish you would have just vacuumed," I cried, and not just because there were apparently tumbleweeds in our house.

Granted, my youngest son, for whom we delightfully purchased the Wiggles car as a Christmas present years ago during the height of his Wiggles love, is advancing toward the age when he can drive a real vehicle and not some plastic car one navigates with Fred Flintstone-like precision, tooting his horn at me when I jaywalked through the kitchen or watching for stuffed animal crossings. So many days my boy and his four Australian lads would cruise through the house, occasionally stopping to pick up that minx, Dorothy the Dinosaur, and sing ditties about fruit salads. For the last couple of years, the car's roomy front seat was the table where I rested my cup. It's trunk, with the gas tank lid that was typically flipped up because I'd reach down and flick it up and down with my index finger while we watched television, balanced my laptop each night when I logged off. Tool Man might say I kept the large toy car around these last few years because of my residual crush on Anthony Wiggle, and to that I would say...maybe.

Mostly, however, it was there for the memories. The memories and the lingering hope that maybe I'd come home one day, from Target or elsewhere, with another child who would cruise the house in it.

Toot, toot, chugga chugga, weep, weep, weep. The Big Red Car is gone.

"I got 20 bucks for it!" Tool Man said. Considering the car is practically an antique and formerly retailed for $39.99, I'll confess I was momentarily impressed with the man's salesmanship. But still...

Later that afternoon, my youngest son returned from school and plopped down on the couch next to me. "So, Dad sold your Wiggles car," I told him. I may have been pouting a little. "Yep," he nonchalantly replied. "That kind of makes me sad," I said. "How about you? Does that make you sad?" With a look on his face that stopped just short of including an eye roll, my sweet 7 year old responded, "Mother, honestly, I can't even remember the last time I used that car."

Honestly. So...so much for memories, eh?

(at least the ones I'm going to keep tucked away now that some other child is cruising around in the Big Red Car!)

With that, he asked for a snack (and in the spirit of all things Wiggles, I - albeit unsuccessfully - suggested fruit salad)(why? because it's yummy, yummy) and then was on his way, and Tool Man and I are 20 bucks richer. You know what you can buy with 20 bucks? A few memories, perhaps, and a hell of a lot of grass seed.