Friday, June 11, 2010

julia and jeanette

Last weekend my youngest brother graduated high school, an occasion which brought my two cousins (10-year-old Jack and 8-year-old Julia) to Boston (they walked by themselves from Washington D.C.). Julia, as tween girls do, became immediately attached to this small stuffed bear wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with my brother's school's logo that she found lying around the house. She carried this bear around with her all weekend, to each dinner, each photo op, each dull speech. Of course, she named it (Jeanette, which i think was a sweet homage to my mother, Janet), "groomed" it with her hand, and attributed wildly diverse emotions to it ("Jeanette's not happy right now," "Jeanette wants candy!"). I found myself growing kind of fond of Jeanette, to be honest. I imagined her having the tomboy spunk of Clarissa Darling but with enough charm to run in the popular crowd with the Selena Gomez-y bears.

Then, Sunday night, after the last graduation-related event was over, Julia came into my room to chat, grasping Jeanette by the head in her left hand. We were talking about something or other when Julia squealed: "Look!" She pointed at another bear, identical to Jeanette, lying on the floor beside my desk. She picked it up and dropped Jeanette to the ground in one swift movement. "I like this one's fur better," Julia said, already petting the new bear's head in the same way she had once doted on Jeanette. And with that she turned around and walked out of the room.

2 comments:

*~Dani~* said...

A tween girl's love - so fickle and so quickly interchangeable. I think that was just evidence of more to come in later years.

valera said...

sigh nothing changes