Casting aside Childish Things
BeBe, Bearded Dragons and the Things We Have Learned (Post #4)
‘When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.’
-C.S. Lewis
I have been sorting through old photos. These are real photos, glossy and slick, printed on paper. Some are still bright and vivid. Others are sepia-toned with age, curling at the edges. One figure keeps popping up in our family photos, someone I had nearly forgotten.
It is BeBe.
BeBe is a pink fuzzy stuffed bear. At least he used to be. BeBe has become grey and threadbare at this point in time. BeBe was acquired by the man who is now my husband as a prize of some sort, maybe from one of those claw machine thingies. He doesn’t remember the details. But I recall that before we were married and way before we ever had kids, he had BeBe. This little pink, squishy bear was set aside for some “future child”. I thought this was a bit presumptuous, but it was also kind of sweet.
Fast forward several years…
When we had our first baby girl, BeBe made his appearance. BeBe was placed in D’s crib. BeBe was waved around enticingly at my firstborn. BeBe was roundly ignored. D took an interest in many things, but BeBe was not one of them.
Fortunately, BeBe got a second chance. When our second daughter came around 18 months later, BeBe was introduced to M, and they became fast friends.
BeBe was my younger daughter’s constant companion throughout her early years, visible in nearly every family vacation photo ever shot. Once, while hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park, we had gone a mile up a very steep trail when M suddenly realized that BeBe was missing. She was inconsolable. We ended up hiking all the way back to the car, where we all breathed a sigh of relief upon finding BeBe safe in the backseat.
BeBe was so well-loved that he was routinely falling to pieces. I was constantly sewing up holes and restuffing BeBe. I would even knit sweaters for BeBe to help hold his insides in. At some point, BeBe got a new nose and his mouth disappeared. I joked that–just as our own bodies are constantly replacing our old cells–Bebe had been completely replaced several times over.
These old photos revealed to me that, for a very long time, BeBe was an integral part of our family. Then he was not.
BeBe and M were inseparable–until the visit to the orthodontist.
You see, M was a thumb-sucker. She was probably about 18 months old when we decided it was time to take away the binky. Many other parents had warned about the horrors of binky-withdrawal in their children. However, we encountered no problem whatsoever. The first bedtime without her binky, M immediately substituted her thumb, as if binkies never existed. M is a very practical girl. So, for the next several years, M sucked her thumb, and all was well with the world.
That was, until we visited the orthodontist. The word had come down from on high. The orthodontist had proclaimed that M must stop sucking her thumb. The consequences of unchecked thumb sucking were described in horrific detail--malocclusion, speech impediment, and eventually braces--In short, a life of abject unpopularity and terrifying financial cost. This could not continue.
So it was proposed, the orthodontist could, for a considerable fee, craft a device, custom fit to M’s mouth that would free her from this terrible habit. It was even suggested that to incentivize M the reward of a Barbie doll be offered for her successful efforts. This orthodontist had clearly never met M before.
Leaving the orthodontist’s office that day, I found myself in tense negotiations with my daughter. “Did you hear what that crazy doctor said? $1200 for a little piece of plastic! Heck, I’ll give you the $1200 and a damn Barbie, if you can do it on your own.” I knew she would refuse Barbie. But what she ultimately proposed would change our world.
And so it came to pass, at the tender age of six, that M cast aside BeBe and became a caretaker to bearded dragons.
For those of you unfamiliar with this breed, these charming, charismatic lizards are native to Australia. Although they start out no larger than your pinky finger, they eventually grow into spiky hooded behemoths a foot and a half long. While they coexist comfortably as young beardies, they become surly and downright uncompanionable as adolescents. A healthy beardie can be expected to live about ten years. Ours lived longer.
Within the space of a year M’s room had been transformed. The beardies–Melbourne and Sydney–who had once sat comfortably together in the palm of one hand, were now separated by panes of glass occupying two huge terrariums which took up the bulk of M’s bedroom. M had become an expert in cutting fresh vegetables, cleaning up animal waste, and dealing with rogue crickets and mealworms that had escaped their enclosure. M even learned to reset the circuit breaker, as the warming lights and heating pads required to keep these cold-blood creatures comfortable routinely overloaded the electrical circuits in her room.
But I have not yet explained what happened to BeBe.
M stopped sucking her thumb that same night, after we visited the orthodontist. She later shared how she had accomplished this feat. She told me as she lay in bed that first night, consciously willing herself not to suck her thumb, she could not get comfortable. With BeBe occupying the crook of her neck, she kept finding her thumb creeping toward her mouth. After some period of tossing and turning, she made up her mind. She could not do this with BeBe. She got up out of bed and put BeBe on the shelf. Then she returned to bed and fell asleep. She never sucked her thumb again. BeBe remained on the shelf.
Then M got bearded dragons.
So what is the moral of this story? Is it true that all of us are destined to cast off our soft pink stuffed bears for the grown-up real world of spiky lizards that require actual food and die without proper care? Perhaps. I suppose it is inevitable that with age and growth comes responsibility, not all of it desirable. However, not only did M learn actual life skills from her bearded dragon experience, she also loved and cared for her spiky lizard friends. They brought much joy to our lives. Mel and Syd ended up being M’s new companions for many years. I took over their care when M went off to college. They were really very sweet lizards and I miss them.
However, I think there is another point to be made. As C.S. Lewis said (quote at intro), with true maturity comes the realization that it is okay to engage in play and the things of childhood. The desire to grow up is a feature of childhood. We look back on the desire to “act adult” later with a mixture of nostalgia and chagrin.
In the end there should still be room in our lives for pink fuzzy things and the other stuff of childhood. In fact, there may come a time when the “real” things start to fade away and all that is warm and soft and comforting takes transcendence once again.
Thank you much for reading. As all of my writing is but an afterthought in the background of my busy life, I am trying to post one essay a month. This is my fourth essay! So far so good.
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What serendipity that I wrote a post about childlike faith this morning then the first post to come through my feed was your delightful essay! Now at age 55 I am definitely embracing the childlike more and more, in an intentional way, eyes and heart wide open, cultivating the enthusiasm to appreciate and share the joys of Life! I love how you spoke about this... I enjoy your writing very much!
I’m holding my stuff animals a little tighter tonight. There’s plenty of love snuggles to go around