“You know why I love stuffed animals so much?”
I’ve been dying to know the answer as to why the worlds biggest fan and consumer of stuffed animals is the way she is. Why she has hundreds, maybe a thousand, in a sprawling pile we are constantly trying to winnow away to no avail. She knows each one by name, and misses them instantly when we steal them away in the cover of night. As if she possesses some little girl, spider sense. Only with her stuffed animal family.
“Why, Lilah?”
Because they’re soft? Cute? Because they always hug you?
“Because they never grow up.”
Ah, shit. Never thought of that one. That one hurts.
The kids, though, they’re all getting older with breakneck speed. I don’t recognize any of us in pictures. I’m growing old and they’re growing up. Stuffed animals do stay the same, Lilah. They may fray and wear, but they never grow up. Their faces always stay the same.
I’m having some serious trouble with this one and it only seems to be getting worse. I can tell myself a million times over that everything goes away, everything is temporary, everyone eventually grows old and dies. But watching your kids go from babies to toddlers to big kids staring at the away game sucks. All the things that have come to an end keep piling up as well. Strollers and dolls and fat faces and lisps and pretty soon they’ll be gone for good, out of the house and enmeshed in their own whirling life.
We all grow old, if we’re lucky. I see it so much more now, as time continues to accelerate. In the evil mirrors at the gym, my reflection mocks me. Another excellent reason to avoid the place altogether. Who the fuck is this middle-aged guy staring at me? Go work out, fatty! And buy some Rogaine while you’re at it. I’m here for a work out, not to get checked out!
The funny thing is I still don’t feel like I could even be that stranger staring back at me. I expect to see the 23 year-old vision of myself every time I look in the mirror, not the swollen moron with lame gym clothes whose joints pop every time he gets up. That can’t be me. What’s with the dark! Where’d the hairline go? This is not my beautiful self!
But even more than our inevitable decline, which is actually quite slow, our children show it to us all the more quickly and completely. We adults go through 5 years without much of a fuss or difference. What’s 5 years when you’ve already done 35! Kids are different creatures altogether, though. They go from a babbling toddler dying to run in the street, to being shipped off to sit in school all day. From a 2nd grader obsessed with fairies and ice cream, to a moody 7th grader obsessed with boys and ice cream. All in those same 5 years. Don’t shut your eyes, you’ll miss it.
There is no remedy for it, of course. Love the present, embrace the future. All that crap. And reminisce. Relive what was. Scroll through all the pictures and cry. Back through the years, a movie of your life in reverse. Pets show up that have come and gone. The kids get littler and littler. Do you remember that? Look how she used to sleep, with both hands behind her head. They ran naked through the house a lot. Remember when we drove that car? Lived in that house? When they fit in a backpack?
Just like the first few rings in a tree, children change so quickly. Expand, unfold. Double some years, you notice as you count the early rings on a huge stump. Which I will be, sooner rather than later. My new rings are skinny now. Some of them are fire years, when you look up close. The saplings around me are really shooting up, though. Their new rings are so wide. Mine are thin, and my bark is cracked.
“Daddy will you jump on the trampoline with me?” Lilah asks for the 100th time. I smile and look at her. I would break their huge trampoline made for kids easily with my fat butt.
“Honey I weigh 200 pounds. That’s the max weight of the trampoline.”
“Oh, yeah, I forgot you were an adult!” She said, completely without guile or irony.
God bless you, Lilah. God bless you. You don’t see me as that old hulking mass in the full-length mirror. You think of me as another kid, just slightly bigger. Which I am. I almost forgot. A little piece of you in those stuffed animals never grows up, and a little piece in me never did, either. If I lose enough weight, I’ll sprain something on your trampoline. I promise.
We laughed a little too hard and probably pulled something… Thank you for sharing this. And thank Lilah for putting everything into perspective. Great post.
Loved this post! You put into words what all parents think and feel as their children grow up much too quickly. Now I am watching my granddaughter change from an infant into a little girl in the blink of an eye!