Bearing the Consequences

We are going though the long arduous process of reducing and cleaning out, getting 4 people and all their junk to fit into a Southern California bungalow. It's been a painful retooling of all our concepts of sentimentality — what is worth clutching and what can be let go. Stacy and I have taken the brunt of the burden, but even the kids have been called on to re-evaluate favorite toys and books and trinkets. They've surprised me with the things they attach value to and have trouble giving up, and the things they quickly offer up to Goodwill that make Mommy and Daddy cringe. But all in all they've been surprisingly willing to pitch in and make the sacrifices.

As she was going through L's room they had to address the pile of stuffed animals that proliferates in that room. (If real endangered animals reproduced at the rates the pandas and lions and dinosaurs do in L's bedroom, we'd really have no extinction worries.) L has a set of shelves that have become the defacto animal shelter and it seemed reasonable to all parties that we should keep only the animals that could fit on those shelves.

The Perkins Family Menagerie

Sorting through the pile Stacy offered up a particularly large teddy bear that would have consumed a lot of shelf space and precluded a lot of the others. L's face momentarily fell, but after a moment of thought she steeled herself and agreed to the parting. The bear was packed up and delivered to its future home with no further discussion.

L, preparing to part with Mommy Bear.  Oh, if we only knew...

A day or so later Stacy walked by L's room and found her gazing at the shelf of the stuffed survivors with a solemn expression.  "What's wrong, L?" asked Mommy.

"I'm just sad," she said.

"Why?"

"Well, when we gave away the Mommy Bear, it left all the little bears orphans. We gave away the Daddy Bear last time."  Stacy was a guilt-ridden sobby mess when she told me the story later.

Mommy?...   Daddy?...