Of Horses and Dogs
May 12th, 2003
will often stay awake for longer than l like. One night last week, after they
finally fell asleep we went in to kiss them and make sure they were still
breathing (oh, those habits from infancy die hard) and we found them both
wearing coats. The air conditioning is on, but not set so low as to make coats
a reasonable proposition. So we had to ask for the story the next morning and
we learned that Aodán had categorized all of their stuff animals into two
classes, the cuddlers and the guards. Aodán, like all good older
siblings, creates a universe and reality that his younger brother accepts and
makes his own (see a future entry on Krypton and Kryptonic). So when the
animals were categorized, they then had to be re-divided between the boys and
negotiated for, and somehow Xander came up short on one or the other and was
offered the sock monkey that Aodán and I sewed from a kit. But, he
protested, the sock monkey did not have pajamas! His pragmatic brother
suggested putting a coat on… and Xander, in his four year old reasoning,
believed that he was being told to put on a coat himself, when his brother had
actually meant to put it on the monkey, so he fell asleep in a coat. And
Aodán saw what he had done was good and put on a coat
too.
I realize, here, that the stuffed
animals are symbols of a world and reality I can no longer enter. I think of
two of my favorite sets of books from childhood, Milne’s Winnie the Pooh and
Gruelle’s Raggedy Anne books, and this theme carried forward in the Pixar Toy
Story movies, of the life of toys known only to one child. I wonder if someday,
Hotiv the horse will have his own entry in this body of work… We got a new
scanner the other night and as I started going through a giant box of drawings
and paintings that had been saved I found this:
and on the other side this:
which, for those not adept in reading early
Aodán phonics, says “Find Hodiv. Hodiv and Aodán miss each
other.”
This note, which makes me teary,
dates back two years to when we were in Austin. Hodiv was a stuffed horse that
Aodán’s father had won for him with a quarter in one of those claw/crane
vending machines. And from the moment Aodán held him, Hodiv was the
chosen stuffed animal, the recipient of all Aodán’s love and attention,
he went with us everywhere and slept with Aodán every night, he was the
toy Aodán chose to take to show and tell, to have with him when his
picture was taken, the grand patron of all of the other toys. Somehow, when your
child loves something you start to love it too, and I grew attached to dear
Hodiv with the odd name Aodán had chosen for him. And then one day Hodiv
went with us to a picnic at the park, at a lovely tree-filled park with a nice
tree by the picnic table with a great branch hanging over the table that was
just the perfect spot for Hodiv to occupy and observe our picnic. Only it was
up and not in the scanning area when we got up to leave and make sure we left
nothing behind… and Hodiv got left behind. And we didn’t realize it that
night or the next, or maybe I realized it before Aodán did, and phone
calls to the parks department, to the restaurant where the claw machine was, to
the vendor that stocked the machine — nothing could bring back Hodiv or a
decent substitute. In fact, Aodán did not realize Hodiv was missing
until a night when his father was away on a business trip and when the
realization hit, it was with hours of sobbing in my bed, inconsolably, and a few
long-distance phone calls to his father. And he kept sobbing how much he missed
his dad and how special Hodiv was because he was from his dad. And I cried with
him and for him and for myself because there are so many losses I’m never going
to be able to protect my kids from, and that hurts. When his dad returned, the
two of them went to Toys ‘R’ Us and bought a successor to Hodiv, also known as
Hodiv and also Very Special. But then a month or two ago, Aodán cleared
his bed of all stuffed animals, generously donating them to his younger brother,
so that there was very little room for said brother on the lower bunk. This made
me a bit sad, somehow. So as annoyed as I am when the kids won’t go to sleep,
I’m a bit relieved Aodán has not yet outgrown his need for cuddlers and
guards.
