Right now it’s all about whether or not America is more sexist or more racist. Will it be a woman or a color that brings us down? Both are equally detestable. Neither very palatable. Not like those that are colorless, lacking in ovaries.

What we know for sure is we don’t want another Republican. Not even a semblance. Apparently, we can’t separate the party from the people. Which is a crying shame. I think.

So much energy. So much energy to sink the other ship. We’re a great big hillbilly with only one tooth among us, depending on other people to show us the way. We’re so unpolished. So unrefined. Mere babes in the woods. We need the compartmentalization.

My son is almost 13. He has loved stuffed animals from the day he was born. Not just any stuffed animal, though. That was a trick. I bought him countless plush toys over the years. Only a few remain. Fewer now. It had to have a certain look. A particular feel. A distinct “huggability”. Not all of them have that. An enormous duck he got one Easter was one of the few. It was big and soft and utterly adorable. It was bright orange-yellow and it flopped just so. There were others. A tiny kitten. A tinier mouse. A beanbag butt bear. These things were given names and dragged from place to place in the house, they trailed from his grasp in the grass and mud. They accompanied him to many events, monumental and insignificant. They were a part of him like a freckle to the flesh.

Not just animals, though. That wasn’t the criteria. My old quilt, hand stitched for me by my grandma when I turned 16, became his legacy when my bed outgrew it. He didn’t sleep with it so much as he tied it around his neck and turned into a high-flying, day-saving, Superman. It was more a companion than a source of warmth. He had pillows that his head didn’t rest on at night. They lay beside him, named buddies, sleeping over for the night.

Ducky
Katie
Pilly-Billie
Blankie

More names I can’t remember. I think there was one called Harry in there. I can’t keep them straight. He was infinitely patient with me when I couldn’t remember the name of the frog who was joining us for dinner.

The extent of his involvement with them diminished as the years passed. They mostly stayed in his room as he went about the world, patiently awaiting his return. He handled them with care, in the sense that he held tight their names in his mind and just wanted them within his sight, a source of comfort in his expanding world, fraught with peril and occasional sadness. They didn’t sit up on a shelf in untouched reverence. They just existed around him. They were frequently caught up in the avalanche of his room. On the floor they sat, helpless to evade when stomping feet, giddy with a sugar high came barreling in, frantically searching for a glove or a trading card. They were tossed aside and buried beneath mounds of dirty jeans and muddy tennis shoes. They served as soccer balls when a sleepover got out of hand. Such sports were they when the bear was made a soldier and ducky became a mountain. They were just happy to be played with again.

This is the reason then, and this is by no means a stab at an excuse, I threw them away.

I didn’t know. The years pass quickly and I wasn’t paying attention. It never occurred to me, the depth of their relationship. I witnessed their presence in passing and gave it no second thought. I endured the requests for an extra cookie for his ducky, thinking it only a ploy to con me out of more sugar. I didn’t know.

It wasn’t a forethought. It wasn’t premeditated. I swear. On my life I swear I didn’t plan to break my son’s heart. It was all Spring’s fault. I was cleaning the house. Well, I wasn’t so much cleaning the house as I was attacking the house. I had a fit of hysteria over the walls that were steadily closing in on me and I could take no more. I scrubbed and disinfected and mopped and swept. I gathered boxes of clutter from every room in the house. I cleaned the blinds and the curtains. I ran myself out of laundry soap. I was like a woman fixated, to the point of borderline insanity. As if I could cheat the quick passage of time by giving myself more space. Fools are we, ever after eternity.

Ducky had a hole in his ass. A big, gaping hole I kept promising to sew up. He had a small head, but a big, fat tush. He looked like a duck who had slipped on the ice, his ass comically up in the air. I don’t know how the hole got there. It was business as usual when I heard the news. Things tend to fall apart in the hands of boys. My job though was to heal the wounded. I was the company nurse with all the right bandaids. Just — this one patient slipped through the cracks.

During my cleaning frenzy I came across him by the back door. He was muddy and crumpled. He had lost most of his stuffing long ago and his rump just sagged on the floor. Not looking on him with the eyes of a child whose whole life was spent sharing secret moments with him, I swooped him up and into the trash. The bag I was carrying was on its way out to the curb. I thoughtlessly added it to the pile and in doing so, devastated my child who loved him so.

And then, worse, I lied. I lied to his face when he asked me had I seen Ducky. I hadn’t planned to. Honestly, it only just then occurred to me what I had done. I tossed it with such ease into the bin, thinking only of my next task and then it immediately left my mind. Until the question. Then it sprang out and surprised me, gleeful in its vengeance. I stuttered and stammered and blinked a million times before blurting out, “Grandma took him! She, uh, she’s sewing him for you! I just haven’t had the time.”

Ugh, may I never have to see that face again, so long as I shall live. That face smiled and beamed up at me as though he had just found out his best friend was coming over and I was a goddess among women. He ran on outside, content in the knowledge that all was right in the world. I felt so horrible. I felt like slime. Like sewage. I felt like one of those things beneath your shoe that you just want to wipe away and be shut of. I was wrecked.

But I didn’t know! I didn’t realize how close they still were. I only noticed that I was seeing them less and less. I figured they were on the outs. He had satiated that need. They, like the roller skates and Pokemon before them, were now out of favor. When I saw the look of fear and desperation on his face when he couldn’t find him, I understood how wrong I was. They were still very much in favor. That need had NOT been met, thank you very much. I reasoned with myself. How could you have known? He’s getting bigger and bigger every day. Every day he is growing older, wiser, more mature. Every day he sets aside a different habit of youth and grows into a young man. Though my heart rails against it, my mind understands it. I further reasoned with myself that he needn’t ever know. I envisioned a future where he was 30 years old and well past the memory of it, asking me, “Whatever happened to that old duck I used to have?” I figured if I could hold him off long enough, he would grow too old to be angry about it. He wouldn’t be sad. He would think back on it with fondness and shrug it all off. It’s very easy to reason with oneself, when one’s ego is on the line.

Could there be a more horrible mother than me?

The problem is though, that didn’t happen. Maybe in some parallel universe, but in mine, the walls came crashing down. In my arrogance in rejoicing at my logic, I failed to provide an alibi for my lie. In speaking with my mom some time later, my curious and devoted son asked her how his friend was doing. My mom, being ignorant of my horrendous lie, told him she didn’t know what in blazes he was talking about. In those words.

I will never forget his eyes when he questioned me later. The desperation and pleading and fear all mingled together to form the most awful gray clouds in his gaze. I’m certain that a part of him knew the truth, but the other part refused to accept it. Everything in his body was begging me not to betray his trust. I failed so miserably. I had to come clean. I had to pull off the band aid. I blurted it out in a rush and then misdirected the anger I had with myself at him. I yelled at him for not taking care of his things. I nagged at him about how often I had told him to keep them put up if he didn’t want to lose them. I pointed out the endless struggle to get him to pick them up, put them away.

I made it his fault.

I made him feel as though it never would have happened if he hadn’t screwed up. I am blameless. I am without sin.

Only, it didn’t last. The guilt consumed me and in the wake of his grief I melted and came clean. I told him that adults make mistakes and we don’t have an instruction manual. I said, “I’m sorry” and took him in my arms.

As important as it is to teach our children to let go, it is as important to teach them humility. I humbled myself before him and swallowed my pride. I admitted that I am not perfect, despite his fantasy fable world in which I am. I forced myself to accept the fact that his view of me would change forevermore. I let him cry. He cried 10 year old tears, those of a boy who knows he’s too old to cry, but he hurts real bad all the same. I felt the struggle within him as he raged and sobbed in my arms. The voices saying, “let go, you’re too old” and “they were my friends. I loved them.” They waged a war in his body and flooded his tear ducts with confusion. The night passed slowly. He alternately carried on as usual and then flew in tears to his room at the slightest reminder. He grieved. He revealed that kitty was hiding in ducky’s stomach when I threw him away. So he lost two now. I tried not to throw up and then I tried not to fuck it up anymore than I already had.

The years have passed. He mentions it less and less with every passing day. We went the next day and took pictures of his friends, so he would have mementos of them in the event of their loss. He mourned the fact that he couldn’t find Ducky in even one of the fifteen million pictures I have taken over the years. I scoured through pictures on my external hard drive for hours and hours at a time, in an attempt to find one picture, just one that held an image of Ducky. He carefully put the others away, out of sight and safe from muddy feet, dirty laundry bombs and careless, stupid mothers. In a feeble attempt to undo what I had done, I continued to pore through pictures on my external hard drive for hours and hours at a time. If I could find one picture, just one, that might make a difference. Occasionally he would mention them again. He would be just as sad as the day he found the truth, but with more constraint. A few times it overcame him; he cried and thrashed and lashed out at me in anger. I accepted the brunt of it in my guilt and shame, but I wouldn’t let him punish me forever. After it got long in the tooth I put a stop to it by reminding him of his own culpability and my subsequent remorse. I wanted him to understand it wasn’t right to hold a grudge, to take advantage of one’s guilt. I wanted him to stop reminding me of my shortcomings.

Now, when he speaks of Ducky, he does so with the corner of his eyes pointed downward in shame. He talks about his old friend with a mixed sense of duty to grow up and a sad regret at the loss. He wants to mourn, but he doesn’t want to disappoint me in his ability to grow up and let go, nor does he want to incur my anger at his failure.

Again, name a more horrible mother.

Children must grow up. They have to turn away from the things of the past. Calling a pillow by name and sleeping side by side with it like a dear friend, is looked down upon in “normal” society. What a pity. Still, we do our best. We try to do what’s right and when we don’t, we say the only thing we can, “I’m sorry”. You try to teach them humility and responsibility. You do your best to teach them it’s okay to mourn and feel. You attempt, in earnest, to educate them about growing up and what it means to be a man. You help them let go.

It’s a bitch, though. And it’s far from an exact science.

How can I possibly be expected to keep up with which candidate is best to run this country when I am dealing with such monumental, life altering events? I’ll tell you what. Show me a candidate who understands what I said. Find me one who can read this and “get it” and I’ll give my vote. I’ll gladly endorse that candidate. He’s the one I want at the wheel.

I won’t hold my breath while you look.