The day we bought Bombie a Pez dispenser, our lives changed a little.
My husband says they were out picking up something from the store when Bombie’s eyes landed on a Pez dispenser in the display and soon her pudgy fingers as well. He chuckled, thinking it would be fun to let her have one. Happy memories of loving his childhood Pez dispenser flooding his head, he told her to go ahead and pick one for herself. My husband loves impulse buys and the kids love him for it. It makes him way more fun than mom when shopping.
And so ran perhaps the first day my daughter made me proud: she picked a Pocahontas-shaped one for herself. Not because of the movie – she hadn’t even seen it. She picked Pocahontas for her darker skin and long dark hair; it reminded her of mommy. (Apparently, even active imaginations have their comfort zones!) For her younger brother, Hucksley, she picked out Buzz Lightyear, again, having never seen the movie Toy Story. Nope. She picked him for his white skin and larger stature.
“Daddy!” she said. “It’s daddy!” You can’t make these things up!
Thus began Bombie’s attachment to this inanimate thing that has the potential of changing the lives of children everywhere. Soon, the candy in it was gone, but her sticky fingers grasped the plastic dispenser with a two-year-old’s greedy enthusiasm. When she finally did see the promo of Pocahontas, her eyes grew wide. I may have watched a neuron or two fire in her brain, I thought, sounding like my husband for a minute. She searched desperately for her Pez dispenser, never more than a foot away from her, hidden in the folds of her pink blanket. Her eyes darted from the screen to her hand to me, thrilled at having mommy, I suppose, in three different places in front of her all at once.
She beamed. I tried, I really, really did, not to roll my eyes.
She even named it. “Mammy,” she called it. (What else?) I was “Mommy,” you see, and Pocahontas had to have a different name lest I find out that Bombie was secretly trying to replace me. However, one vowel wasn’t fooling anyone, and especially not when she was whining. She even woke us up a few times from bed, screaming, because it fell out of her crib and how could she possibly go to sleep without “Mammy” beside her? Did I mention she carries it around everywhere she goes? I have stumbled over to her crib many a time bleary-eyed to see her pointing to “Mammy” lying innocently on the floor, my daughter bawling her eyes out at not being able to reach it.
Psychologists, I hear, call this kind of thing which helps children get to the next step in their increasing independence a “transitional object.” But the list of transitional objects for my daughter grows every day. She has her blanket, which used to be a nice fluffy pink and is now torn in three places and somewhere between grey and brown. She also tends to get caught up in rituals, like wanting a book or stickers or worse, toys in her crib, at bedtime. I sometimes wonder at the cramped space she sleeps in, but I think it makes her feel safe. Currently, she shares her crib with about eight dolls. I’m convinced she has named them because if I sneak one out, she hunts for it. Something tells me she’s going to have a dozen kids. Watch out, Duggar family.
Still, I do not begrudge her the toys. Rather, it is her attachment to things and rituals that worries me the most. It is enough to drive me to tears. I dread getting her a new toy because I know that in some way it is adored, pedestalized and included into a routine before I even hear the slightest rip of the gift wrap.
Bedtime is perhaps when this behavior shows up the most, perhaps because I’m pleased to give her what she wants if she will just lie down and go to sleep. And that indulgence on my part turns her into quite the control-monster; it’s as if she becomes completely incapable of even a little change. Every bedtime has to follow the very same elaborate ritual or no one’s going to bed or getting any peace in the home. And so, lately, my biggest advice to new moms is this: be careful how many steps you add to the ritual of bedtime. No matter how perfect the baby soap commercials seem and how loving the family looks, all huddled together reading a book after baby’s bath time, remember that someday that baby will wear you down and you will become secondary to doing all those things so baby can get to sleep. My rule now? If I cannot count aloud the bedtime ritual to the children, it’s too long. Our current one goes something like this: Drink milk, brush your teeth, say your prayers and it’s off to bed. They even repeat it after me.
“Nuk, tee, pear, ta-taam.” Milk, teeth, prayer, bedtime.
Ritualistic routine-attached behavior is not new. I have seen it in more than one and I’m not just talking about my children. Here are the sins of the mother. Attachments come as naturally to me as breathing. Some virtually drop into my lap via the television when I think I’m relaxing.
Today, for instance, is Valentine’s Day, a day when I think I’m going to step out my door and hearts are going to come falling from the sky and cover the sidewalk. Every woman’s fantasy, right? Oh, to feel the squish of red velvet hearts under her three inch heels! What woman doesn’t sigh at the thought? I laugh at it but not without wincing a little because it reminds me of a time not too long ago, a time when I understood love only within the confines of romance.
It was our first Valentine’s Day since we were married. We decided to go out on a date. As it turned out, it was a disastrous evening to be out – we would have done way better had we stayed home and ordered pizza. We ended up waiting for over an hour and a half in an annoyingly loud restaurant for a table. Then, when we finally got one, it was even louder and even more uncomfortable to be in the dining area than in the waiting room. We decided to leave. In the car, in tears, I complained to my newly married husband.
“You’re not doing this Valentine’s Day thing right!” I whined.
He sighed. “Let’s go home.” He sounded resigned to hate this day for the rest of time.
“But I’m hungry!” I lied.
We ended up having dinner at a fast food place, where there was room to sit and, believe it or not, it was quiet! The French fries put me in a better mood. We may have even smiled and joked a little. Then we went home and opened a bottle of champagne. He gave me the candy he had bought for me as a gift. All in all, the day had had a rocky start but ended well. More importantly, my husband has continued to bring me flowers on every Valentine’s Day since without complaining and sighing, so I guess the damage I did that first day was not irreparable.
However, today I still look back at that day a little peeved. I will admit that the reality of it was far indeed from my expectations of how it would turn out and so I am peeved that I didn’t get the Valentine’s Day I wanted, but within that is a different irritation, deeper, more subtle, almost hidden. And that is really annoyance at myself, because it has taken me all of ten years with my husband to realize that, ultimately, my focus that day had been all wrong. I have come to realize that what we see on television and fill our heads and hearts with is all wrong. The television cannot convey the love that matures, the love that binds, the self-sacrificing love of marriage, the enduring love of God who has created marriage as an earthly representation of His eternal love, Christ’s love.
The television knows nothing of Christ’s love.
What I should have wanted that day was not the hearts, the romance, the candlelight. What I should have wanted was to celebrate my husband and – by extension – us. What I truly vowed to love at our marriage was not the singular night of chocolate and wine and hearts; it was him after all – him, having worked all day, still patiently waiting with me in a loud restaurant, him, trying to please his bride, him, at the McDonalds eating fries with me, him, opening a bottle of champagne. The rest of the things were contrivances to get to him, embellishments that had taken the place of the one thing that mattered – him, in love with me.
If the television knows nothing of Christ’s love, I’m beginning to realize, by the same token, I know very little of God’s love. How many times have I been, to Him, exactly like my daughter, grasping for things, finding comfort in them, things created than the Creator Himself? How many times have I cried to Him when something fell just outside my reach? How many times since that night have I continued to whine and cry that my husband hasn’t made my birthday, a vacation day, just perfectly the way I wanted it? How many times do I insist that I have an absolute right to my regrets?
As I grow older, my regrets grow with me. A house bought too soon, a friend lost, investments not made, then made, and ruined, homes sold, people hurt, a bankruptcy. Regrets that scream out life isn’t fair, regrets that cry, I must be recompensed for this, Lord. Even though I will only grudgingly accept whatever else it is you have for me and say, Fine, if that’s how it is, Your will be done. And in the process, I will trample over other people’s emotions and scream and yell and generally make a nuisance of myself. No, I am beginning to think I will probably never learn to take things in stride. I will never learn how to shake it off and walk on knowing that He is by my side. Never truly believe that all things happen for the good of those who are called by Him. The hands of faith I extend will never quite be completely empty of regrets – those idols of the heart.
My daughter’s Pez dispenser is not me and, while I am slightly flattered that she chose a very slender and high cheek boned beautiful Disney-ized Pocahontas as my replica, it is still clearly not me. That Bombie would then push her brother aside and throw a tantrum for it, rebelling against me and being as big a nuisance as she can so that she can then have her sweet moments with something that simply reminds her of me is frankly saddening. It brings me face to face with my own idolatry; it drives me to repentance.
Someday, God willing, my daughter will understand this. Someday in the future when she’s picking up another toy her child demands with a tantrum and she starts to pull her hair out and say, “But I’m right here beside you! Why do you need another thing? Another obsession?” Then hopefully she will look toward the sky and The Holy Spirit will whisper in her ears, “Listen O Israel, the Lord thy God is one. The only One. Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, all thy soul and all thy strength” and she will cling to Him and hope in some small way to instill in her child this truth. She will pray fervently for God to touch her child. And, maybe, in some small way, that is when she will understand why today even against my will I wake up and stumble half-asleep to the side of her crib at one a.m. to hand her the Pez dispenser that has fallen out of the side and sigh.
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