It is astounding to me, in this age where service industries dominate America, that the Twin Cities no longer has a diaper service, but the last one has bitten the dust. Cheek to Cheek Diaper cleaned my daughter’s diapers from 2004-06, and the now-defunct Crib Diaper did my son’s from 1998-2000. I’m glad we are done having babies.

Disposable diapers are noxious things, but they do a better job of hiding what’s in them, and that’s why they rule (you get a longer sleep from a dry baby than a wet one). I am sure diaper services are not a growth industry (In a story we published four years ago, Cheek had 300 customers; it is down to 125 today.), but it strikes me that the Twin Cities is a particularly inhospitable place for businesses that care for people in their domestic lives.

Don’t ask me why—probably part of the Lutheran DNA, self-sufficiency, etc.—I think people here are sheepish about having someone to clean the poop out of their kid’s diaper. Perhaps this is pointless nostalgia rooted in a sense that more and more of our progress is not really making our lives easier. (Love those ads showing folks checking their e-mail from a National Park or tropical beach.)

My son comes home from summer camp today, after two weeks away. Last week we sent his sister to Grandma Camp, and my wife and I spent a week together alone (on a very busy work-vacation—progress!) for the first time since 1998. It felt odd and sort of lonely. It was a sneak peek at empty nesting, and I realized what an adjustment that will be in 2022, should we be so lucky. (Try having a week of meals with your spouse, not mentioning your children, and having anything to talk about by day six.)

Cloth diapers create a tactile sensation that takes you to infancy or early parenthood faster than about anything else. There are a pile of cloth diapers on a shelf in my daughter’s room, relics of an era of her life that is now past. She will start school in a year and at some point will want them out of her sight.

For now, though, I enjoy looking at them when I go to kiss her good night. They are remnants of a chapter of her life that is now over, an era of child rearing that is gladly past, but nonetheless a reminder that progress is not all it’s cracked up to be.

As a community, we have to mourn when we lose the last remnant of a piece of our collective history.