“Call Him My Gerbil”
A picture my daughter posted on Facebook today reminded me of a story I’d written nearly 25 years ago about my daughter as a four-year-old. So… The picture is of my grandson, Grayson, following in his mom’s footprints:
Every family has its collection of “don’t say it” words. You know, the ones that get spelled so often the spelling becomes the name: “Mom, can I have some g-u-m?” In our family, “pet” has joined the collection. Merrilee, my 4-year-old, is the critter lover in our family—if it moves under its own power she’s off after it. It must be either a genetic predisposition for such things (I have a particular fondness for 6-legged creatures), or else an attempt to emulate, yet distinguish herself from, her older brother, Dan. At 8, Dan is fascinated by motion as well, only the power comes from batteries rather than muscles. Whatever the case, any member of the Animal Kingdom is fair game to Merrilee for a potential P-E-T.
A 4-year-old cannot possibly understand all the ramifications of the pet issue: Where will we keep it? “He can sleep with me!” Who’s gonna pay for it? “I will, Mommy. We can use my pennies!” Who will take care of it? “I will, Mommy.” Right.
And somewhere along the line it hits you—right in the old Parental Guilt Department. Can a child grow up normal if denied the opportunity to care for a pet? How will she learn responsibility? Remember how you felt when YOUR mom said no to that Saint Bernard puppy?
So far, we’ve been able to override those guilt pangs with cold, common sense. But it hasn’t always been easy. Christmas is especially difficult. This past year Merrilee announced on more than one occasion Santa Claus was bringing her a kitten. Fortunately, it never made it in the letter to Santa, and any last minute hopes for four-footed miracles were forgotten, thanks to sheer volume and confusion under the tree on Christmas morning.
Then there was the gerbil incident. It began innocently enough. Dan came home from school one day last fall and announced a blessed event at his friend’s house. A litter of gerbils had arrived and would need new homes in a month! I offered the classic parent response, “We’ll see. . . .” Given enough time, we hope the child will forget the issue at hand.
Dan is old enough to be reasoned with—and would probably be more interested in the exercise wheel than the gerbil itself. Merrilee, however, is still pre-coherent. She was not to be so easily persuaded. Never mind she had no concept of “gerbil”—it was obviously alive, and probably furry. We managed to put off the immediate request, and in no time (give or take a week), she finally stopped announcing we were going to get a gerbil.
We thought the matter was over—until a month or so later. My little nature lover dug in the mud one day and found a small buttery-colored grub. Merrilee had found a pet to love and care for. She only squished it a little getting it into its new home, a fine china bowl from my kitchen cabinet. She ran in and proudly showed us her new P-E-T.
Her daddy and I gave the perfunctory performance: “Isn’t that neat, dear!” We waited to see what we were in for next.
“I’m going to keep him,” she beamed.
“You can watch him for a while and then you probably had best let him go be with his friends. He’ll be happier back in the dirt where you found him,” we suggested, hoping she would take the hint.
“No, I’ll just give him some dirt and a leaf and he’ll be happy,” she assured us.
“We don’t even know what he eats!” we countered, appealing to her gastronomical sense of fair play.
“Uh, huh,” she insisted. “He eats Bug Food!” I wondered aloud, “Where does one buy ‘Bug Food’ anyway? Is this a new product in pet stores—Purina Bug Chow?”
Things were obviously getting serious so we appealed to her lack of knowledge about time. “You can keep him till tomorrow, and then you need to let him go.”
“Okay, and he can sleep in my room!”
She skipped off to show Dan her prized possession and carefully instructed him, “You call him my Gerbil!”
Merrilee tenderly cared for Gerbil all that afternoon, and we managed to convince her a jar would be a more suitable bed for him that night than her pillow. The next morning she tearfully agreed to let him go, and insisted on returning him to the same spot she’d found him the day before. She carefully dug a small hole, dropped Gerbil in, covered him with dirt, and stomped on the dirt “so nobody else will find him.”
“Tell your friends ‘Hi’ for me!” she called.
And so, for at least a while, she had her Gerbil, we had done our parental duty, and one small creature had its day of unexpected love and devotion from a 4-year-old.
© 2015 Melissa Clark Vickers
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