Bea and I went to buy decorations for her Easter basket today, and while we were at the craft store we headed down the sticker aisle to let her pick out a sheet of special stickers. Stickers are definitely the treat of choice around here these days, right up there after chocolate. So Bea picked out some stickers with realistic pictures of cats on them, carried them all around the store while we finished shopping, handed them to the cashier and took them back again by herself, and asked to keep holding them when we got to the car to put the rest of the decorations away. No harm in letting her carry her stickers, I thought, so off we went to Canadian Tire with stickers in hand.
Fast forward through the rest of our shopping and we’re coming out of the customer bathrooms. I’ve got a huge Rubbermaid tub filled up with a tarp, grass seed and 5kg of potting soil plus my massive belly to carry, and Bea suddenly bursts out in tears. “My kitty stickers!” she cries. “Where are my kitty stickers?”
I look in the tub. No stickers. I look around – this store is huge, and we wandered awhile before actually finding the things I needed to buy, so the possible area in which the kitty stickers could possibly be found is huge, not to mention the very likely scenario that they fell to the ground underneath one of the displays. We walk back over our tracks and revisit each part of the store that we went to, checking all the while for the kitty stickers. No stickers.
As we head back to the bathroom to check the last place we went before giving up on the hunt for the stickers, I weigh my options in my head. The craft store is just across the parking lot. We could easily go back and buy another $2 sheet of kitty stickers. Or, we say that they’re lost and we go home without stickers today, possibly risking a major meltdown in the middle of the store.
Thinking back on it now I still feel empathetic – the look of pure loss and sadness on her face when she realized she’d lost her stickers was 100% genuine. I know what loss feels like, and to know that I could step in, godlike, and replace those lost stickers with a fresh sheet from the store was tempting. And yet, I didn’t. We dealt with the sadness and tears, she had a cuddle and then said, “I think maybe a snack would help me feel better.” Cookie in hand, she waited patiently while I paid and looked thoughtfully out the window while we drove home.
It was one of those bittersweet parenting moments to realize she could be so mature about losing something special. And bittersweet to realize that letting her cope with loss when it’s just kitty stickers will prepare her for losing bigger, more important things later on, when there won’t be anybody who could step in and replace what’s been lost.

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family, journaling by michelle