I am not what happened to me. I am what I choose to become.
– Carl Jung (1875-1961) Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist.
Another life chapter has ended.
The kids have had adventures, learnt new things, met new people, and even found new and improved ways to encourage their parents.
They’ve also grown older.
My daughter Bella is starting middle school next August, Hayek is obsessed with his drone project, and my youngest, Mises, has just started climbing everything in sight, especially his bookshelf. So it’s time to update their room.

We’d decided on a bunk bed, but when I handed my wife a measuring tape and followed her into their room, her shoulders began to shake as she was overcome by the crippling tears of a woman who has never quite accepted the audacity of the passing of time and its effect on our children.
This was a job for me.
I gently led my weeping wife out and told her I’d handle the inevitability of our children maturing.
Right. Here we go.
I measured where the bed would go.
Space was now limited, so in lieu of buying new furniture for their things, we figured we could get rid of some of them.
This should have been easy enough, I foolishly told myself, not yet knowing the raw emotional journey this project would set me on.
I sat on the floor and began going through the books.
Board books would be easy to purge, I thought — my kids had outgrown them.
I never would have guessed that maybe I hadn’t.
I managed to set aside the books in pristine condition, the ones never loved enough to be chewed or drooled on.
Then I found the torn ones.
It was hard for chubby little hands to tear up a board book, so I knew these had seen some serious toddler action.
These were the books I used to read to them in the throes of sleep deprivation, the same titles that once filled me with dread whenever I saw them.
But now that my babies were older, that feeling had softened into wistfulness.
Where had the time gone? OK, maybe books could wait till later.
Next, I moved on to the toys.
The plastic kind my wife once swore she’d never buy, let alone own.
We were going to be an eco-friendly family, thriving on wooden toys and plant-based activities.
Sure, sure, I nodded. I went along with it.
But once I discovered the brightly glowing plastic rattle that hypnotised my daughter just long enough for me to shower without interruption, all bets were off.
I declared an “executive order” on the spot, striking down the no-plastic rule with the full imaginary weight of my office.
The policy remains in effect to this day, predating even Donald Trump’s first.
And here it was, still sitting on a shelf.
In the delirium of new parenthood, my wife had named it Freddle, thinking ourselves hilarious.
My kids probably don’t even notice it anymore.
I couldn’t bring myself to let it go.

Clothes. The clothes should have been simple.
I couldn’t possibly justify keeping things that no longer fit them, right?
Wrong.
I started in their closet, gently handling old coats, each one stirring a different emotion with every memory it triggered.
This was the outfit she wore on her first day of pre-K.
This was the snowsuit he had on the first time he faceplanted into a snow drift.
And this — oh, this was the one my mother had kept from my childhood.

The one Mises wore nonstop in his second year: a red Mickey Mouse bomber jacket from the 1990s, made in China.
She whispered once that it came from her first paycheck as a maid in a well-off Chinese household in Teng Bukap, Padawan.
Almost an antique now.
An heirloom, if you will.
So of course I had to keep it so that future generations could remember us — and their grandmother.
Suddenly, I was reminded of a box I’d tucked away in the closet under the stairs over a year ago — full of kid paraphernalia I’d meant to sort through but forgotten.
I opened the door and pulled it out.
This was a mistake.
The first thing I found was my old Toy Soldiers from the 1990s — the one my father had sent over for the kids, but which I’d deemed far too precious for their destructive little fingers.
It’s vintage.
They wouldn’t get it.
Beneath it were my old Where’s Wally? Books, which the kids had been too rough with at the time.
But they were older now.
Maybe they could respectfully find him?
I brought the box of relics into their room.
“Wait, now you’re adding things?”
I closed the door to muffle my wife’s completely correct observation.
Inside the box, I found my old stuffed toys: the orca hand puppet and the fancy Harrods bear given to me by a long-forgotten fancy colleague during my London posting.
I placed it next to Mises’s stuffed dragon which he named Dinosaur because he’s either a comedic genius or an idiot.
More likely, he’s only five years old.
This is the same kid who, last night, pointed at a blaring ambulance and shouted “Bus!”
When my wife’s colleague tried to set him straight politely, Mises held up a finger.
“No, no. Listen to me carefully, V is for bus,” he repeated as if revealing a long-lost gospel truth passed down from the gods of kindergarten.
Anyway, I made a home for these ancient treasures.
My mother preserved every piece of my childhood in her small wooden room back in the village — and here I was, ready to discard my children’s.
What was I thinking?
My wife entered the room I thought I had successfully barricaded and found me on the floor, drunk on nostalgia.
I guess this wasn’t a job for me after all.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune. The writer can be reached at med.akilis@gmail.com