As a parent, one of my favorite things is sharing stories from when Suzzane, David M., Charlie, and Bradley were little. Those memories don’t really fade the way others do. They don’t usually come from big events or carefully planned milestones.
Most of the time, these memories come from everyday life—store aisles, car rides, toy shelves, holiday sections, and quiet moments you don’t realize matter until much later. “Most of the time, they come from everyday life—store aisles, car rides, toy shelves…”
This series came from those kinds of moments. The small ones that sneak up on you when you’re just running errands or walking through a store and something familiar pulls you straight back in time. Suddenly, you’re not standing in the present anymore—you’re back in a season where your children were small, where life felt louder in some ways and simpler in others.
For Charlie and me, it started with something as simple as walking into a bookstore and seeing shelves that brought everything rushing back at once. The children’s section in particular has a way of doing that. Especially when you see familiar titles like the classic Little Golden Books sitting there in rows—bright gold spines, simple titles and fun illustrations, and that unmistakable feeling of childhood packed into thin little pages.
Those books were more than stories. They were bedtime routines, quiet moments before sleep, and the kind of comfort a child remembers long after they’ve outgrown the words. Seeing them again has a way of stopping time for just a second.
From there, it turned into a collection of moments that kept connecting back to family, childhood, and the way time moves without asking permission. A toy aisle doesn’t stay just a toy aisle when you’ve lived enough years in between raising children. It becomes a timeline. You see a shelf and remember who loved dinosaurs, who always went for dolls first, who lingered over cars and action figures, and who never wanted to leave without one more thing in their hands.
Even the seasonal aisles do it—holiday displays, school supplies stacked too early, clearance bins that hold things you once bought without thinking twice. It all starts layering together. Not in a dramatic way, but in a quiet one that settles in your chest before you even realize what’s happening.
Each post in this series stands on its own, but together they tell a bigger story about growing up while raising kids, and then realizing—sometimes all at once—that the in-between moments were never really “in-between” at all. They were the story. These are the moments that keep showing up in different places, reminding me that the smallest days often become the ones we remember most.
Come and share a memory from your children’s childhood or your childhood.
Thank you,
Glenda, Charlie and David Cates
