Last night, much like every other night, I found myself reading beside my 6-year-old daughter, Emma, as she drifted into slumber. The only sounds in the room came from the gentle hum of her white noise machine, and I thought she was close to sleep—until I heard a soft sniffle.
“What’s the matter, sweetie?” I asked.
“It’s Sparkle the Unicorn,” she said, stretching out her arm from under the covers, revealing her well-loved but worn stuffed animal. “Look at her! She’s so old and dirty! She doesn’t look like she used to.”
“She’s just fine, Emma,” I reassured her. “That’s what happens when stuffed animals are cherished. Remember the story of The Velveteen Rabbit? Sparkle is becoming real because you’ve loved her so much.”
“I know that’s not a real story!” Emma replied, tucking Sparkle back into her chest, sobbing into the unicorn’s mangled horn, further adding to its wear and tear.
Recently, we had a panic about Sparkle—we thought we had lost her forever. She was merely hiding under a mountain of blankets (we are fort-builders, after all), but it took us three weeks to discover her (cleaning isn’t our strong suit). In the meantime, we convinced ourselves she was lost, perhaps at a rest stop somewhere, and we started to come to terms with the loss.
But when we finally sifted through the mess, there she was, buried beneath the chaos. Emma was ecstatic to find her friend again, but her joy was mixed with concern. She held Sparkle close, peering into her plastic eyes with a furrowed brow, reminiscent of a worried mother.
Weeks prior, I had casually mentioned to my children that they would soon need privacy for things like bathing and dressing. Our family has always embraced a carefree attitude about nudity, but my older son, Jake, is approaching puberty, so some boundaries will be necessary. Emma was devastated by my words, but not because of the privacy—she was upset about Jake growing up.
“I don’t want my big brother to grow up! I want him to always be with me!” she exclaimed.
“Your brother will always be just four years older than you; he won’t outgrow you,” I reassured her.
“But he’ll have his own house someday!” she cried.
“Doesn’t he say you can live with him?”
“Yes, but we won’t be here, in this house, with you and Dad. Everything will be different!”
“Maybe you can live next door, and we’ll dig a tunnel between our houses!” (Just humor me; I’m trying my best here.)
Emma shot back that building tunnels between houses isn’t allowed by city codes—duh, Mom.
We’ve had similar discussions with Jake when he was Emma’s age, navigating that realization of how fleeting things are. I still remember grappling with those thoughts myself as a child, the weight of impermanence and loss pressing down until it felt suffocating.
This realization is what Emma is starting to understand. It’s dawning on her how temporary everything is, how fragile it can be. Remember when our little ones first grasped the concept of object permanence? How sweet it was when our baby realized that if we disappeared behind a blanket, we weren’t really gone? Yet, it was heartbreaking when they figured out that when we step out the front door, we actually leave. Each time we vanish and reappear, it’s a little trauma for them, not knowing when we’ll return. Through this cycle, we teach them that we will come back, instilling a sense of permanence in their world. But one day, that certainty fades away.
When Emma pulled Sparkle from the blanket fort wreckage, she was understandably taken aback by the stuffed unicorn’s dilapidated condition. Three weeks of snuggling with cleaner toys had highlighted just how worn Sparkle had become. But it wasn’t until last night, while we were reading together, that the truth fully hit her: Eventually, Sparkle will fall apart. She will wear out from all the love and attention and ultimately slip through our fingers.
Jake will grow up and start to distance himself. Sibling baths will become a thing of the past; they won’t snuggle under blanket forts anymore. We can’t truly dig tunnels to stay connected, and beautiful moments do come to an end. Object permanence is a fleeting concept.
Emma cried, alternating between shoving Sparkle at me for a feeble attempt at cleaning her and clutching the unicorn tightly. I encouraged her to sleep with Sparkle for a few more nights while I searched for ways to clean her without causing more damage. Maybe I could help restore some of her former glory.
For tonight, we’ll all squeeze under a blanket fort, some of us just in our underwear, blissfully unaware that the word “impropriety” holds any meaning. We’ll weave tales of a family that lived together forever on the same land, adding buildings one by one. And while those structures might seem separate to outsiders, what the family knew was that, hidden deep below, there was an unbreakable tunnel connecting them all.