Stash

Most parents (that I've met) have a stash of something, mostly candy, either deep within a sock drawer or in a shoebox on the top shelve in their closet. My dad's stash was in the bottom drawer of his and my mom's bureau--easily accessible by any one of his children--but it was usually something lame like a giant bag of lifesaver mints.  There was the occasional birthday or Father's day Toblerone, but we all figured if any piece of that went missing... well.... we might as well get a head start on sitting in our rooms for the afternoon or weeding the entire garden by ourselves.

My mom was different. She would stash school supplies. Beneath her side of the bed were plastic tubs filled with brand new, not-yet-opened boxes of crayons, markers, colored pencils. Glue sticks, construction paper, paperclips that required squeezing and placing over packets. Fresh, white binders that crackled when they opened, filled with blank college-ruled notebooks and zippered bags of unsharpened pencils.
This was her stash, and none of us could touch it. 

Each August before school started, she would pull out the tubs and allot each of us only our necessary quota of supplies, and send us on our way.
Now, let me explain that she was not a selfish hoarder of these children's supplies. She rarely denied us another box of markers when ours dried out (only if it was our fault)--but we were always expected to go through her. No digging around in her personal stash unsupervised. 

But what I could never understand was that my mother herself only occasionally dipped into her own stash. The portion unused by her kids remained in pristine condition inside those tubs. 

Even though I don't have kids old enough to know this firsthand, maybe it's because she wanted to keep something for herself. Or, more likely, maybe she craved the security of having extra. While us kids were snapping our own crayons in half and letting lidless markers and glue sticks dry out on the floor, she knew there was more. While us kids (seven) cleaned out the cupboards and depleted the laundry detergent and went through packages and packages of diapers--our house always would have enough of at least one thing.





I wonder what, in a few years, I'll feel is important to stash...