I always wanted my kids to have the "cool" stuffed animal. I wanted them to be the odd one out. So, when Owen was born I bought him a stuffed fried egg, a stuffed ravioli, a cool dragon, and a neat narwhal. Needless to say, he didn't really take to any of those. And he didn't really have a favorite stuffed animal until he turned 1. To this day, we still don't know where he got this thing. It's a nerdy little tiger, with a ribbon bow under its chin, that goes everywhere. In fact, if he leaves him at home on "accident" we say tiger stayed home to take a nap because he was tired.
I don't think Owen realized that his father's favorite animal was the tiger; I think this stuffed animal just showed up around his birthday, and he started asking for it. It seems to me that most kids have some "comfy" habit...sucking thumbs, sucking a pacifier, twirling hair, carrying around a blanket or a stuffy. Owen is no different. Except, it isn't just carrying around this stuffed tiger. He winds his fingers through the little bow...around and through-over and under. First his forefinger then his thumbs. He used to get frustrated when the loops would get tangled. He would whine and hand me tiger to unwind them. I think for nostalgia sake, he askes me on occasion, although he can most certainly untangle them himself.
Tiger used to have 2 eyes. They were open. Until Owen decided that he liked sucking on them. He sucked one of them almost off till mom had to take out the plastic eye and sew it shut...so Owen wouldn't swallow it. We had a winking tiger for quite awhile. Then the other eye got sucked on. So, out it came. Tiger now is perpetually asleep which, I was sure was going to bother Owen. It didn't. He just kept on loving it eyeless and all.
He loved him easily...until he couldn't wrap his tiny little fingers around the ribbon. You would have thought the world had ended. His wails were sad and kinda funny at the same time. Who would have thought a small piece of ribbon would cause so much heart-ache in this little kid's eyes? And I didn't know how to fix it. So, I called up the one person I knew who could...my mom. The one who stitched all the broken parts. All my broken parts. The knees, the hearts, the moments in time that seemed to have shattered for some unassuming reason. I needed my mom to fix my baby's toy. And she did. With such chuckling grace. Shortly before she left my heart broken, she fixed his.
Kinda thought she would always be here to mend the knees, the hearts, the moments in time that seemed to have shattered for some unassuming reason. I thought she would always be here to fix tiger when his ribbon came off. But, she isn't. And it did. He was a little older now, and not so heart-broken. His world wasn't shattered because he knew that tiger could be fixed. But, mom did it. And I still can't sew. But, I wanted to try. I wanted to fix Owen's broken heart...his broken tiger.
I did an okay job. It has since fallen off twice, but I still have that small black piece of string that mom used to stitch the ribbon back under tiger's chin, and I will keep stitching that small piece of string back on until I can't any longer. Or, until Owen decides that he doesn't need tiger like he used to. However, I can still promise that I will keep that little piece of string. Mom's last stitch to remind me that broken things can be mended...not always with string, but with love and a little bit of chuckling grace.
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