Lost Loves & Life Lessons

Just about everyone over a certain age will find themselves taking on aspects of their parent, usually corresponding to gender. For me, I just couldn’t see it, (even though my husband periodically responds to me “okay, Camille”). That is, until I had to grieve lost loves this past month did I hear Camille’s voice ring out, “Can’t I have anything nice?”

First Grief: My beloved multi-colored sarong. I know, a sarong, how emotionally attached can I really be, but you don’t understand what special meaning I have imbued on this 6 x 6 piece of cotton fabric. Its trekked the globe with me acting as bath towel, beach wrap, beach towel, dress, skirt, head wrap, privacy boarder(in hostels), blanket, sheet, etc. I’ve labored wearing it, twice, and now it’s traveled to Brazil.

The other morning after wearing my beloved, I hung it up on a spare nail that was in the doorway of the bathroom. About an hour later, my 3-year-old came into the kitchen and asked for some glue to “fix it”. I said, “fix what?”, thinking of the various little toys that litter the floor these days. I followed her into the bedroom where she stopped and held her hand out like Vanna White and said, “see what happened.” There was my sarong, shredded down the middle and up one side. She said something about trying to swing on it like Tarzan. Her words of explanation fell on numb ears and my eyes welled with tears as I unhooked the now tattered piece of cloth. I took it to Matt and buried my face in it and sobbed. He just patted my back in support and this is when I heard my mom’s voice ring out, “can’t I have anything nice?”

Second Grief: About two weeks later, I saw my link to the familiar, my escape, my virtual-friend-my laptop, lying on the floor and again, my 3-year-old, finger in mouth, one foot pigeon-toed, huge green eyes wide, murmuring an explanation. Her explanation drowned out by my racing heart as I picked it up and placed it on the table. We slowly opened the screen up and turned it on. I was praying it wasn’t broken, but alas as it booted up, the screen had a beautiful crack from the left corner down to the right. Only have the screen was visible. My stomach turned and my mouth went dry. All my writing, all my pictures were in this square piece of metal and plastic. I turned and looked at Grace, and I opened my mouth, and out poured Camille’s voice, “can’t I have anything nice?!!!”

So, on this wet, rainy Wednesday, pen to paper, I’m realizing what a terrible speller I am. I’m realizing how attached I am to material objects. I’m realizing that I do not practice what I preach. There are many good things about having kids, they seem to be teaching me lessons in life that I didn’t even know I needed to learn. And it’s hard to come to terms with imperfections in ones personality. I know I should make the most out of these two events and how I’ve handled them, I know I should glean what I can to become a better person and parent. But, as I sit here, pen to paper, I find myself not reflecting on how to be less attached to material objects but desperately missing the spell check function.