Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Jackson the Tenderhearted

Last night I read a great book to the boys. It was "Polar the Titanic Bear." According to the story, there was a little boy named Douglas Spedden on the Titanic who had a stuffed bear he named Polar. The Christmas after the sinking of the Titanic, Douglas's mother wrote the story of the bear and the boy and gave it to her son. It is a sweet story and is beautifully illustrated. All this sounds lovely, right?

Well, at one point Polar gets left in the lifeboat and before Polar and Douglas are reunited, the mother buys Douglas a brown bear to hold. When Polar is returned, the brown bear is forgotten. This is a very minor plot point to most readers, but not for my Jackson. Tears well up in his eyes and he buried his head in the covers. Then he started to sob. You see the problem, don't you? What happened to the brown bear? It was abandoned! Douglas did not love the brown bear.

We tried to tell him that someone else came along to love the brown bear. The story was not about the brown bear, it was about Polar. That did not seem to help. We decided that we might write our own story of what happened to the brown bear. He also decided that he would pretend one is his bears was the long forgotten bear. Jackson finally seems to be claiming down

In the meantime, all of this tenderheartedness had an effect on Jonathan. He got choked up about a missing toy of his. In a strangled voice, he said that it was important to him because Trevor (a friend from Texas) had given it to him. "I used to have friends in Texas, remember?" Oh geez! I knew there was no point in reminding him that if this toy was so important, he would not have lost it in the first place. He is very sentimental.

He finally decided that maybe if he cleaned his room, he would find the missing toy. There's a winning idea if I ever heard one. I probably could have scrounged around in there today and found it, but I did not want to take away the incentive I have right now.

I have not found the heart to tell him that our trip to see some of our Texas friends has been postponed. I strongly suspect that we will be visiting some part of Texas at least once this summer.

3 comments:

SG said...

I sure hope you visit this point sometime this summer! I told K & R about our postponed reunion and both were not happy. :(

Antique Mommy said...

I must get that book, or is it too much reading for a toddler?

I certainly hope you'll make it to Texas this summer. Do you really need a reason?

SG said...

Susan the lazy blogger! :) Ok can we try for once a week?