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Photo of Larkin

A year ago, at a tag sale, we bought Larkin a pair of sneakers. They were bold turquoise and brand-new, and at $3, I couldn't say no. The only problem was the size — size 8, way too big for Larkin, then just a year and a half old. "They're enormous!" Molly laughed. I said we could put them aside; someday they'd fit.

Well, that day is now. It came a lot sooner than I thought it would. Suddenly Larkin's so big. And so verbal. Just three months ago her utterances were pretty basic. Now she says things like "Do you have a problem, Daddy? I have a solution!"

A child of two and a half is beginning to have a past — clothes and toys she has outgrown, a chunk of life (and a younger self) that is behind her forever. Last weekend we had a yard sale, and our front lawn was strewn with baby items. A young mom showed up and bought a few of them, including Larkin's Exersaucer. While she was getting her car, I went over to the Exersaucer and pressed the duck button on the little wheel of animal icons. I recalled Larkin as a six-month-old, smashing gleefully away at the duck face, laughing at the quacks and the silly marching music. Suddenly I didn't want to part with it. I was half hoping the young mom would change her mind and just drive off.

A ridiculous impulse, of course. What are we supposed to do, keep all Larkin's baby stuff forever? But nostalgia exerts its pull, sometimes to the point of absurdity. I remember when Larkin's first front teeth started coming in. Molly and I had both loved her toothless smile; there was just something hilarious about that perfect gummy grin. Oh no, we said, she'll never again not have teeth! Same with language. Of course, we were eager for her to talk; but when it began to happen, I found myself thinking, "Can't she be a baby forever?"

These aren't really thoughts. They are splurges of emotion disguised as thoughts. They are laments over the relentless and irreversible nature of change. Nostalgia, it turns out, isn't just a mood, but a way we register time and its passage.

As for Larkin herself, the reality of time's passage is just beginning to make an impression. I was curious about how she'd respond to seeing her old stuff arrayed out on the lawn. At first she wandered around, laughing and playing. Eventually her playing became playacting. She squeezed herself into the little plastic bathing ring. She sat down in her infant car seat and demanded to be carried. "Look at me!" she said. "I'm a tiny little baby!"

It's funny to see a two-and-a-half year old experiencing her own brand of nostalgia. Recently Larkin has developed an attachment to her old "bouncy seat." This is the cloth papoose, stretched across a flexible metal frame, in which she spent much of her first six months, sleeping on the floor in my office while I clacked away at the keyboard and rocked her with one foot. Recently Larkin saw the bouncy chair in the closet and asked what it was. "You used to sit in this seat when you were a tiny baby," I told her. "You sat in daddy's office while daddy worked."

Somehow the bouncy seat made its way back into circulation, and Larkin began playing on it, pretending to be a baby. One day at breakfast she burst out with one of those unprovoked soliloquies that remind you how spongelike kids are when it comes to stories. Out of nowhere, she began to talk about the first year of her life. "I was a tiny little baby in the bouncy seat in dada's office, and mama was at school and she cried."

"Mama cried?" I said.

"Yes, she was sad because she missed her tiny little baby and she cried, wah-haaah!" She wailed pathetically to illustrate how sad Molly had been.

Can Larkin actually remember any of this? I doubt it. Rather, she's using narrative to create a past for herself. I do what I can to help. "Remember when we went on vacation and went in the cave?" I'll ask her. She goes silent and focuses. She's trying to remember.

I find myself hoping this process might eventually build a bridge of memory for Larkin to use later on. It's probably wishful thinking. How many memories of life as a two-year-old do you have? Often over these two and a half years, Molly and I have been blown away by the thought that as an adult Larkin will not consciously recall any of this phase of her life. For us, this period has been so enormous, so significant and joyous and stressful and, well, unforgettable...and yet years from now, our daughter won't remember any of it.

Meanwhile, this unrememberable past continues to grow, and someday not so far off, even those enormous size 8 sneakers will seem tiny. In my closet I'm keeping a box containing all Larkin's shoes, from her first booties onward. One day I'm going to turn them all into an art project, showing the literal and metaphorical steps of Lark's first few years. For now, though, I'll leave it to her to put on her new blue shoes, cram herself into the bouncy chair, and try to reconnect with her babyhood.