Pot Meet Kettle

Today I got to wondering if I am the only near forty year old woman who has carries a stuffed mouse in my purse to work.  If you are saying to yourself, yeah, sister, probably, I would have to agree.  However, I wonder if there are other adults out there who use comfort objects to get through their day as they battle anxiety or overwhelming grief.

Cory used comfort objects since she was a baby.  Her crib blanket was washed so many times, it became a colorless industrial gray, ragged at the edges.  She carried it everywhere during her toddler years, and slept with it until junior high.  When her mental health began to falter, blankie was hauled out for another tour of duty.   Throughout her lifetime, Cory always had a stuffed animal or doll at the ready.

In the last several months, I’ve been carrying a wide variety of comfort objects with me:  Cory’s stuffed mouse from when she was seven, her mini American Girl doll in my purse, her hat, and many others.  My bed is currently filled with the last American girl doll she held, the last stuffed animal I bought her, and some of her all time favorites.  Her hat from grandpa is under my pillow, and may likely stay there for all of time.  It soothes me immeasurably to have Cory’s things near me when I am missing her, and finding her absence hard to accept.

Comfort objects are also sometimes called transitional objects because they help a child transition from one setting to another or from one area of development to another.  When children are uncomfortable being away from their caregiver, they may use an object to stand in for that person, so that they are gradually able to feel comfortable with the separation.

I read about this today, mainly to find out if I am losing my mind to be toting a stuffed mouse with a zebra striped scarf tied around its neck to work every day, and was surprised to make a connection that made me deeply ashamed of myself.

Bob, Cory's biological father reentered her life, after a ten year hiatus, when she was fourteen.  I know that she, like I, had hopes things would turn out differently than what they did.  A lot of folks may even judge me for entertaining that notion based on his prior behaviors, and I can understand that. 

But they need to understand this:  to say that Bob was “screwed up in the head” as many of them did or “evil” or to assume that he was incapable of change, getting stable, or living a normal life would have been to bestow the same miserable fate on my daughter.  His condition was not his fault any more than Cory’s was hers; biological and environmental factors had merged into the perfect storm that created his illness.  He, unfortunately, had not been given the type of support needed to overcome his illness, and instead turned to substances, which made everything even worse.  The abuse he saw and suffered as a child had lasting effects, as well.  Since he could walk, he had seen problems solved through violence.  It would take a lot of professional support, but I was not beyond thinking there was a good man in there that desperately wanted to make different choices for himself.  Wanting something and following through with the necessary actions to attain something are, however, two very different things.

Once he exited her life yet again, it was a different brand of abandonment for Cory to suffer through. Before, Cory could not have picked her biological father out of a line up.  Meeting him face to face at fourteen was truly like seeing him for the first time.  When he left for the last time, she was seventeen.  She had memories of him, good and bad.  She’d had time to get to know him, his strengths and his flaws.  While she knew he would never be that Disney dad, there were parts of him that she missed very much.

So knowing that when they’d last spoken, he’d said some very cruel things to her, just imagine my face to see her months later, running around the house in one of his ripped t-shirts.  You want to talk about mixed emotions?  Pull up a seat, friend, cause I had them all. 

First and foremost, there was pure rage to see her honoring him by wearing his clothes when I could still hear, “You can have your schizophrenic kid!” still ringing in my ears.  There was hurt and resentment towards Cory herself.  When I saw her in one of his shirts, it felt like a slap in the face to me.  Like, really, you still want him after everything he’s done? 

Pot meet Kettle; Kettle meet Pot.  I should have been able to sympathize with her better than anyone how hard it was to say good-bye to him while protecting yourself from future emotional harm.   Instead, I know that I verbally (or non-verbally) let her know I disapproved…the heavy sigh or eyes looking anywhere but at the shirt spoke volumes.   That was so selfish and wrong of me.  Cory was only trying to use an object to help her mourn her loss…her loss of her actual relationship with her biological father, flawed as it was, and her loss of her dream relationship with him, that was never realized.  She wanted to feel close to him, and remember the good times while slowly coming to terms with the fact that things had not turned out the way she had hoped they would.

When I see Cory next, I will apologize to her.  It’s a sick joke how much better I understand so many things about her now that she is gone.  And for whatever it is worth, I am glad she got to know the funny, loving, silly side of her biological father, because she was part of him, and she needed to know there was good there, and it was worth fighting for.