This post is a bit longer than the posts you're used to seeing on this blog. I'm sorry about that. But trust me--you're going to want to stick with this story. It's a good one.
Earlier today, I drove from my house in New Jersey to my new home in Northern Virginia. I'd already moved the vast majority of my things in at the end of January, but I went immediately from moving in to taking a two-week siesta in Texas, so I needed to still bring some things down from New Jersey before getting my new DC life going.
So this morning was, as you can imagine, pretty stressful. I, as a rule, tend to forget at least one or two things, no matter how thoroughly I double-check, so I was trying to be as careful as possible.
At last, I found myself standing in my room--not empty, but substantially barer--taking one last look at everything before I departed. My mom strolled in as I was pondering, walked over towards my guitar, and immediately lifted an aged but no-worse-for-the-wear stuffed dog off a pillow laying on the floor. She gave me a look and said, "And what about Wraggles?"
There's a little more backstory necessary here. (Again, I urge you to bear with me.) Wraggles was a gift from my aunt, received almost twenty years ago when I was just five years old. He was a replacement for my former beloved stuffed animal, Snuggle Bear (yes, the fabric softener spokesplush), which I'd lost on a family vacation to North Carolina. I was very attached to my stuffed animals, so the unceremonious loss of Snuggle Bear had affected me powerfully, and my aunt felt that perhaps if she was able to attempt, in some small way, to replace him, I might start feeling better. Well, it worked like a charm. I immediately adored Wraggles. And while over the years my taste for stuffed animals undulated like a rolling tide--at one point, I slept with no less than four--many came and went from my bedside but Wraggles always remained.
So when Mom asked me "And what about Wraggles?" I was a bit torn. He would be coming with me, sure--that much was non-negotiable. But my current residence has a certain temporary feel to it because, with Karen's DC job search in full swing, it'll be only a matter of time before we strike out and look for a place together. So as much as I wanted Wraggles to join me, I didn't feel like now was the right time.
And so I told Mom he was staying. Then I asked for a moment alone with him, which she gladly obliged. Once she'd left, I clutched my plush pooch, gave him a big hug, and said, "Don't you worry. I'll come back for you. But for now, you hold down the fort here." I went to replace him on the caseless pillow on the floor, but it just didn't seem right. And as I'd stripped the bed to have the sheets washed, I couldn't replace him there either.
So instead, I opted to give him a significant, if less cushy, vantage point:
There I laid him, and with that, I took another load out to the car, leaving only my guitar and my computer bag behind.
Now, my mom had been helping bring stuff out to my car as well, but my dad and my brother were both in the garage working on fixing the shocks on my brother's truck. So I had a pretty good idea of where everyone was while I was in the car arranging things to be transported. When I went back into the house, my brother and father were still in the garage and my mom was, I assumed, back inside.
Once I got inside, I heard my mom's voice call out to me, "Changed your mind?" I didn't know what to make of this, so I asked back, "What do you mean?" At that point, I deciphered that her voice from coming from my room, so I went immediately there. As I walked in, she looked at me, then pointed, and said, "About that."
"That," dear reader, being this:
I giggled a bit. After all, it was pretty cute. So I looked at my mom and said it was very cute. But what she said next was far from cute: "What are you talking about?" Oh, you know, Mom. The way you moved Wraggles so he'd be sitting on my bag like that. "I didn't move him." Yeah you did. I left him on my desk. "Dave, I didn't move him." You had to have. "I really didn't." Oh, come on...
But then came the pièce de résistance: "I swear on my mother's grave."
Talk about a gut check. My mom lies about lots of stuff (hell, we all do), but I learned a long, long time ago that if I wanted to get the truth out of my mother, I'd only have to ask one question. Back when my grandmother was still alive, that question was, "Do you swear on your father's grave?" Then it became, "Do you swear on your mother's grave?" Either way, the result is the same: my mother will lie about a lot of things, but she will never swear on her parents' graves if she's telling anything less than the truth.
In other words, she did not move Wraggles.
Of course, it wasn't out of the realm of possibility that my brother or father had moved him--perhaps on her request. But in my mind, I'd already ruled them out: they were in the garage the whole time, and besides, Dad would have had better things to do, and my brother probably would've just picked on me for still keeping a stuffed animal around (even though he, manly man that he is, moved his old blankey to his new house when he got married). And besides, it would be a loophole for Mom to be able to swear on their graves and not be lying--but again, I figured that was a bit too deceptive and tricky for such a serious oath.
Nevertheless, after I loaded up my guitar and computer case, I asked my brother and my father if they'd gone inside during my last trip out to the car. And neither one of them did. Nor did they have any clue why I would ask something like that.
So Mom didn't move Wraggles. Dad didn't move Wraggles. My brother didn't move Wraggles.
And there was no one else home.
So what exactly happened?
Truth be told, I don't know. But what I do know is this: even if there is a plausible, rational explanation for what happened, I can't shake the bizarreness of what transpired. Somehow, Wraggles was meant to come down here with me, no matter how temporary my present situation. He was like the Hobbes to my Calvin, vital and essential. Or perhaps, as Karen suggested, he needed to be there so that no matter what happened, I would have something to hug--because really, don't we all need to be able to just do that sometimes?
But really, none of that matters. What matters is that, after seeing what happened, and not being able to explain it, I became convinced of one very obvious thing: there was no way I could leave him in New Jersey.
So he did come with me this time, temporariness be damned. And before long, he had a new fort to defend:
And I wouldn't have it any other way.
