This year, my daughter valiantly gave up her lovey - a beat-up old sleep sack that she’s used to help comfort her while she sucked her thumb for five+ years. (Yeah, remember Mr. Mom? Sleep sack was like Kenny’s Woobie.)
While I still occasionally catch her with her thumb in her mouth in the middle of the night, I’m so impressed and amazed that she willingly made the choice to stop and become a Big Girl. I’m glad she’s rid of the attachment and am keeping my fingers crossed we have helped cheapen our future orthodontic bills. But there’s a huge part of me that is sad she’s given all of that up. So easily.
Today I’m honored to feature a guest post by Eli Pacheco, a talented writer that I’m a HUGE fan of, who hits this whole attachment nail on the head.
It’s the last post of the year, folks! To all of you who have stuck by me this past year, thank you. May you not give up on me as easily as my daughter did her sleep sack.
photo credit:Kalexanderson via photopin cc
My mom once babysat a kid. We’ll call her … Fifi.
Fifi had a blankie. It was a white, silky-bordered blankie. Fifi sucked on the silky edges. Fifi’s mom cut it into mini-blankies, but Fifi used only the ones with silky edge to suck. They were always slobbery.
Fifi’s family – we’ll call them, the Krikensmirtzes – couldn’t venture anywhere without a blankie.
Before my voice even changed, I’d made up my mind about one part of parenthood, at least.
Jesus, please don’t let my kids grow attached to a blankie. Or anything close to it.
Especially a suck blankie.
Fast forward 25 years. I’m now a father of three girls. Few parts about fatherhood suck. And not a one involves the silky fringe of a stinky blanket. In fact, none of my girls – now 17, 14 and 10 – have ever had a blankie, or anything close to it. No must-have teddy at bedtime.
Not even a favorite shirt, or favorite toy.
I could have handled it if they did. I’d understand. I’d show compassion. But I would never turn the car around for JuJu the pink tiger or ShooShoo the blanket or anything, right? It would be the first of a lifetime of lessons in How to Maintain Like a Human Being.
I also felt it would be a stage if it happened.
My kid would someday leave behind that toy or blanket or comfort item. She’d vanquish it like diaper dependence or pacifier addiction. (Hell, they didn’t even use a dooboo, or yaboo, or whatever people call that favorite rubber pie-hole plugger. Or even suck a thumb.)
It’s as if these girls took their first steps, and never looked back.
Isn’t there something sentimental about an attachment?
About a kid who so loves the home you’ve helped to create for her that she must keep something from it with her always?
If a kid doesn’t cry and cling to you as you drop her off to the first day of kindergarten, have you been doing it wrong?
There were plenty of tears on Elise’s first day of kindergarten. They were my own.
Who needs a comfort item as a kid ventures into school and big-kid life? Me. I kept, for a short while, a velvet-soft stuffed bunny she played with.
It wasn’t even a comfort toy to her. But it became that for me: The dad who wouldn’t move.
Fast forward 10 years. Elise is a junior in high school. Marie will be a freshman next year. Grace will be in fifth grade in the fall. I long ago passed on that velvet-soft stuffed bunny.
I appreciate grace and strength and beauty in my girls. Miniscule adventures gave way to colossal ones, to milestones and moments. The idea of attachments faded out with last school year’s pictures. I see better now, too. I notice when my girls wear my shirts and hats.
Is that attachment, or just comfort? Either way, I’m OK with that.
Marie embellished a drab white clothes cabinet with her artwork. It’s decorated with drawings and words of inspiration, a blend of beauty and whimsy. It’s her personality, in bright Sharpie ink.
Open a door to this cabinet and find birthday cards from years and years. There are soccer photos, notes from friends, and other artifacts of a girl who grew up with love. In the upper right-hand corner, there’s a quarter-sized metal turtle with glossy colored shell taped to the door. A trinket I haven’t seen in years.
“You still have this?” I asked, rubbing a finger over the smooth shell to prove it’s there.
“Well, duh,” Marie says in predictable teen dialog. But she smiles.
It remembered the day I fished it out of my pocket, and put it in Marie’s little first-grade hand as she wiped tears. She’d just cried into my shirt on my belly. She didn’t want me to leave after my tour as lunch dad. “I’ll be back to pick you up soon, honey,” I said. I thought the turtle wouldn’t last the day.
Before I even had made it out of her room that day, I’d made up my mind about one more part of parenthood, at least.
Jesus, please don’t let my kids ever lose that often silent but always sustaining attachment.
To me.
# # #
When he isn’t trying to fit into size 32 jeans or hosting awesome guest posters, Eli Pacheco is dad to three awesome girls and writes the blog Coach Daddy. Follow him on Google Plus, Pinterest and Twitter.
