Last weekend, Simone was counting down the hours until it was time to walk to our favorite bookstore. We’ve made a habit of strolling over after dinner some nights, taking in the summer evening and then parking ourselves on a couch in the children’s section to read to each other. Simone always adopts a stuffed animal off the shelves of plush toys to keep us company. A few weeks ago, she took to a pink dog with mismatched clothing and floppy ears. She decided to put it on hold and save up her allowance to buy it herself. Okay—she decided to do that after I told her I wasn’t buying it for her that night.
Simone has become fairly adept at saving up her allowance for things she covets. So far, she hasn’t branched out beyond toys (and one expensive Nintendo DS game), but I don’t mind, as long as she’s learning how to save and delay gratification for things she really wants. I give her a list of chores to do (straighten her room, remove her toys and crap from the rest of the apartment, brush the cat, dust), and when she gets everything on the list checked off, she gets five bucks.
Simone had saved up almost enough for the dog, so she got up early last Sunday morning, and brushed Akiva and straightened her room before waking me. After breakfast, she went to her room to gather up her cash, and realized $10 was missing. She started to get agitated, so I offered to help her take her room apart to see if we could find it.
Simone is really good with numbers, so I doubted that she had just miscalculated how much money she’d had. I remembered that a few of the bills had been strewn around the room earlier in the week, so it seemed most likely that they’d just taken a detour under the bed, or into her change purse. Or something.
And then I had an uncharitable thought. That week, because I’d signed a new lease, my apartment management had sent the cleaning service to our apartment to give the place a free once-over. Was it possible that one of the cleaners had seen the $10 bill loose in Simone’s room and pocketed it? Although it seemed unlikely, I couldn’t completely banish doubt, and I blamed myself for not putting Simone’s cash away in her room before the service people arrived.
It was a conundrum:
1. Had Simone carelessly lost the money?
2. Did she not actually have enough saved?
3. Did someone from the cleaning service take it?
If the answer was 1 or 2, then I had every right to tell her she’d just have to keep saving (though that would be a harsh response just seconds before we were walking out the door to the bookstore). If the answer was 3, then it was more my fault than hers. What to do? Where was the balance between coddling her and giving her more responsibility for the situation than she deserved?
So I came up with this. And though I’m not sure it was the right solution, it seemed a good compromise for my conscience. I loaned Simone the 10 bucks, and she’s re-earning it over the next couple of weeks. She was able to buy her doggie, but she’ll be paying it off a little longer. I’m hoping she’ll learn her lesson about keeping track of her cash, but neither of us had to suffer her disappointment if we didn’t walk over and buy the thing that morning.
But it got me thinking about loss. I’m not talking about grief and loved ones and dead pets. I’m talking about the way we lose stuff all of our lives, and the effect some things can have on us. Like the way it still galls me, 18 years later, that my camera was stolen out from under me in Paris. Or how I’m still bummed I had to leave my piano behind when I moved. And what the hell happened to my sunglasses?
I’m not talking Rosebud-level losses, here. Just the things, little and big, that mysteriously disappear from our lives. I’m not ready for Simone to feel the attendant disappointment that rides along. And attempts to protect her would only make her less likely to understand the importance of keeping track of her stuff.
I did cheat last spring, and I’m going to stand by it a little longer. Her maternal grandmother had bought her this kick-ass electronic creature called a Robo-reptile, and she lost it. I know it had been at our place at some point, but I’m fairly sure she brought it back to her other house. But it nagged at me that we might have lost the thing in the apartment, so I’d look for it whenever I thought about it. One night, over dinner with a friend, Simone mentioned that she thought Robo-reptile had gone off on its own to look for other robo-pets to play with. Our friend suggested Simone write a letter to the toy. Cute, right? So Simone did just that, and left the note on her bed before leaving for the weekend.
How could I not buy a new Robo-reptile and put it on the note, waiting there at the foot of her bed when she returned home Sunday night? I mean, really? It’s true that I don’t much like the fact that I totally screwed with her perception of reality:
“Robo-reptile came back! Did you find him?”
“Nope. He wasn’t here in the apartment.”
“Where did he come from?”
…shrug…
And I had to tell her mom that I’d bought a new one, so she wouldn’t have that vindicated, “I told you it was lost at your place” position.
But…still.
Anyway, I’m a little worried about how I’m going to handle it when Simone loses something important to her. I know I will grieve, too. And I’ll feel guilty, and I’ll want to fix it. It’s a harsh lesson to be learned, like when someone breaks your heart for the first time. It’s inevitable, and a powerful learning experience, but it still sucks.
And then I think about other stuff she could lose in the coming years, which totally depresses me; her sense of wonder about the world, her insistence that toys come to life when you’re not looking, the conviction that dragons and dinosaurs are still around somewhere (they’re hiding), and her faith that her dad is the coolest, craziest, most amazing guy on the planet.
How do I replace those things for her when they’re misplaced or stolen?
What? Toys don't come to life when no one is looking?
Posted by: Karen | September 06, 2007 at 02:09 PM
The blog is called Dating Dad, but where did the dating part go??
Still love the way you write:-)
C.
Posted by: Chassy | September 13, 2007 at 11:44 AM