Carry Your Childhood With You

“If you carry your childhood with you, you never become old.”

---Tom Stoppard

People say that “old” is a relative term. I’m not sure about that. Just this morning, I was rooting through my fridge to get some leftovers to bring for lunch. A couple of days ago, there was a nice chicken leg in a covered dish, with some garlic broccoli rabe, and it would make an excellent lunch, right? Not so much. When I took the cover off, all that remained was a fossilized piece of congealed meat with something that looked like it might have once been a vegetable. Or a lab experiment. Clearly, I need to start putting labels on the leftovers, because there was no doubt that this food was old. Super old, like give-you-food-poisoning old. It’s a good thing that people don’t age the way leftovers do, cold and alone, slowly becoming unrecognizable. Wait...omg...that actually happens sometimes. OK, I'll work on that next

 I’m 55 as of last week. Somehow between running around in my yard as a kid, skipping through high school summers on my beach, going to college, getting a job, and having kids of my own, more than half a century has passed. Does that mean I’m old? Who knows? I remember a woman I worked for in my first “grown-up” job. I was an investigator for the Department of Labor, working on cases of racketeering, embezzlement, fraud. At one point, I was the youngest person in my job in the country. Joan, who became a dear friend and mentor, celebrated her “speed limit” birthday one year at an office lunch party. I remember thinking how amazing she was. Her career was legendary among the rest of us new agents; there wasn’t anything she either didn’t know or couldn’t find out. Now I’m the same age Joan was then, but why do I still feel like a kid? Maybe it’s immaturity, and I just need to grow up?

Nah. It’s not that. Joan used to say all the time that it’s not the number of years you’ve been around; it’s what you do with them. One thing that hasn’t happened for me is giving up certain pieces of my childhood. Who would do that? On my bed sits a very worn-out stuffed dog. His name is Quincy because I got him at a toy store in Quincy Market when I was ten. I don’t go to sleep without him. Quincy was standing by when I had my kids, when I had my hip replaced, and when I had cancer. He’s been through it all with me. Talk about looking your age? That poor pup is showing his age. An overzealous pug got at him once, and I had to stitch him back up. The pug was banished to her crate, and Quincy recovered. He no longer has eyes, and his fur isn’t white anymore, it’s a faded dingy dishwater color, but he’s still here.

Maybe it’s silly to be so attached to a piece of cloth, but I don’t care, and it’s not just me. Asking around among my friends, it turns out that many of them have a “woobie.” Seriously, almost everyone has something stashed away from childhood. A favorite blanket, a stuffed animal, a doll, or that last Matchbox car they can’t throw away. Considering how crazy our world is getting, is it so wrong to hold on to something meaningful from a time when our biggest worry was getting the good swing at recess?

There are days when it’s so tempting to tuck Quincy under my arm and bring him everywhere. I can’t be the only one who could use a little furry friend during a stressful meeting or a challenging day, right? When I see toddlers in the supermarket, wearing footy pajamas and carrying a teddy bear, I am downright envious. I want to high five them and say, “You are living your best life, you go!” Jammies and Quincy might not go over well at a staff meeting or an interview, though, and people probably would stare at me and think, “She’s off her head for sure, she’s carrying around a stuffed dog.” Also, I have a terrible habit of losing things, so if Quincy ever got misplaced or, God forbid, left behind, I’d be devastated.

We should never have to put away anything that brings back good memories and provides comfort. Yes, I’m 55, and I have a stuffed animal I can’t sleep without, so what? You can have my Quincy dog when you pry it from my cold, dead hand. Until then, he’s with me.