My dear, sweet 59 year old soul mate wife has suddenly emerged from the basement, rivulets of tears trickling from both eyes. Trying to talk while she cries, she struggles to get the words out. “I…. need you…..to help me with this…..decision.”
My initial reaction is surprise and concern. There are, after all, lots of tears. But then I smile both inside and out because in her arms she is clutching five stuffed animals.
Each of the five has a name. The largest is a tiger, Elaine, named in honor of one of the several older sisters who bestowed the beast on my wife. There is a skunk named Louella, a panda named, of course, Teddy. Piglet, is there, too. The quintet is completed by a small baby duck known to my wife as Laurie’s Duck. Laurie is another of my wife’s older sisters who had, for reasons unknown, abandoned the creature many years ago. My wife, being my wife, naturally adopted the orphan and has loved it ever since despite it’s unromantic but historically accurate name.
And now she arrives in the kitchen in rather desperate straits with this entourage of ragamuffins.
Recent empty nesters, we are now moving out of our family home of 15 years into a cozy condo. We are at the “winnowing” stage. Winnowing is not that easy. It makes us adventurers in a jungle of family memorabilia discovering and recovering ancient clippings, trophies, baseball cards, letters, meaningful T-shirts, photographs (oh there are endless photographs) and now, …today…the stuffed animals.
Had we considered it in advance, we probably would have expected to be emotionally ambushed somewhere on this adventure, but the power of a rediscovered letter home, a photo of the two older boys holding their little brother and now the stuffed animals is still shocking, somehow debilitating yet exhilarating at the same time, and bittersweet. It seems that time has passed not just way too fast. It seems to have utterly disappeared.
And now the stuffed animals.
They aren’t my stuffed animals. They are my wife’s. She’s discovered them in the bottom (naturally) of a trunk, under the eaves in a remote corner of the attic. While she is, in fact, the one who packed them originally (and how many times now since she was, what, 12 years old?) she was still caught off guard, her emotional detectors at parade rest when Elaine and friends suddenly appeared bringing with them the power of countless sweet and innocent memories.
Totally surprised, she was overcome by their sudden appearance at a time when we are supposed to be winnowing. Countless times in the last few weeks she has been the strong one, rhetorically asking me, “when is the last time you used that?” as I clutch one of somebody’s old lacrosse sticks. The words of some wise but emotionless person ring in my mind. “When in doubt, throw it out.”
But these…these are the stuffed animals. Every morning, for years, they were carefully, comfortably arranged on their bed. Clearly, they are not lacrosse sticks or soccer balls. They are something else entirely.
Yes. They are now several shades of grey darker than in their youth. Most of the furry parts have coalesced into various little balls scattered about their worn cloth skin. Elaine the tiger came with two piercing, metallic blue green eyes (somewhat like her donor). Once mesmerizing they are now a dull plastic green. Their dilapidated condition, though, matters not a whit to my wife. Their faces are as lovable as ever. These were her “friends,” her confidants. They were loyal and true. They were sources of solace. They were dependable. They were always there for her.
And now, faced with this painful decision she is paralyzed. It is a moment when I see several of the sides of my wife. There is, as always in times like these, the practical side. We won’t have much space in the new house. If we don’t exercise some good judgement and discipline in the winnowing process, we’ll be out of storage space in short order. And these are scruffy old stuffed animals, for goodness sake. “ I haven’t even looked at them since we moved in here 15 years ago,” the practical wife reasons through the tears.
Seconds later the years of love and friendship overwhelm her reason, and she stammers that she knows she has to toss them. But that reality is a bit too much to bear, and she needs me to do what good mates do in these circumstances. Help her come to a difficult decision.
Initially, I have to admit to chuckling at the scene. Her tears and emotion seem disproportionate to the downright forlorn and ragtag group of animals her arms encircle. My years of experience save me though, and I recognize that I’m on the border of dangerous territory, a territory with which most husbands are quite familiar, and risk being disrespectful of her feelings. This is not recommended.
Catching myself, I search for the words that might calm her and provide the wisdom she’s looking for. This, too, is a mistake. She has a gene that allows her to see through any manipulation. No, she will demand to hear what I really think, what I would do, not what I think she wants to hear.
So I proceed with care. I explain that I know what those animals once meant to her, not that they’ve lost any meaning over the years mind you. I venture that we’re entering a new phase of our mutual lives together and that this is the perfect time to move on and leave things like this behind in a literal sense, although, I acknowledge they will always be with her in spirit. I say these things with as much calm as I can muster, but honestly am not so sure of them myself. Will I, for example, be able to discard my son’s first baseball glove? I am not so sure.
Then I watch with great interest and, admittedly, some trepidation as my wife’s practical and emotional selves grapple with compromise. Through her tears she reasons.
“Well, I ….can’t just throw them….. away,” she laments and the very thought of that brings more tears. Then she arrives at the compromise. “I need to help them find a new home,” she decides.
With that she marches outside to the curb, Elaine et al in hand, where we have left an array of other items also looking for new homes…bookshelves, desks, bins of toys…the detritus of 30 years of family life that seems to disappear magically once it hits the curbside.
At this point I lose track of this drama as I focus on the next box to pack. I don’t realize that my wife has reentered the house and resumed her subterranean winnowing tasks. Not having seen her for what seems like a long time, I imagine that she’s out at the curb still deciding… or worse.
I go outside to check on things, and she’s nowhere to be found. I imagine the worst. I envision her, despondent, wandering the neighborhood trying to cope with her grief.
I get to the curbside to a touching scene. Each of the five animals has been carefully placed. Elaine on a bookshelf. Louella perched lovingly on the edge of the toy bin. Each one looking outward at their hoped for rescuers. But each one quite…alone. I can only conjure that my wife has assumed that one person who would take the whole lot of them is very unlikely. So each one is adorable, but quite alone, abandoned, plaintively searching and hoping to be rescued by a passerby… someone who may have more sympathy for their plight and appreciation for the pure unconditional love that only a stuffed animal can bring.
As I witness this scene, I think of my wife walking off her sadness as she trudges through the neighborhood.
Then my eyes settle on those of Laurie’s Duck, and it hits me. The animals unleash all the memories for me as well. All the Little League games. The backyard games of catch. The games of h-o-r-s-e at the basket in the driveway. The stories. The love. They all come cascading down on me, and I, too, am ambushed. Standing there at the curbside before an audience of five stuffed animals, I am amazed and powerless as my own tears flow freely just as all the memories do, recognizing the age of innocence gone by in a flash.
Now I’m operating purely on emotion. There is only one thing to do. I quickly but tenderly gather up Piglet, Elaine, Teddy, Louella and Laurie’s Duck. They do not need a new home. They have one, and so it shall remain. And I have to confess, the feeling of them in my arms really helps. I am doing the right thing.
Much as my wife started this drama, I enter the house with my arms full of stuffed animals, my eyes full of tears. I am both surprised and relieved to hear her footfalls echoing in the now vacant kids’ bedrooms upstairs. She isn’t sadly pacing through the neighborhood after all.
I call to her and ask her to come to the top of the stairs where she peers down and sees me laden with her friends. The woman I love bursts out laughing at the sight. She, of course, had departed from her place of sadness. She had accepted that the universe would find them a new home, and it was time to move on…but she hadn’t taken me with her to that place. Didn’t even realize she had to.
Smiling, she comes down the stairs and embraces all of us. Together we laugh at the poignant absurdity of it all. Together we place each of them, Piglet, Elaine, Teddy, Louella and Laurie’s Duck, snuggled close to each other, in the corner of the living room couch. We assure them that they will be moving with us.
We take iphone photos of the group to keep for posterity, and to remember this crazy moment.
Perhaps only they know that there will be another trunk in another remote corner of the attic in the cozy new condo.
