I’m a lot of things to my daughter. Mostly I’m the one she trust the most. She trusts me to comfort her when she wakes in the middle of the night. She trusts me to feed her when she’s hungry. She trusts me to hold her and tell her it’s okay when she has a bump, bruise, or scrap. But mostly she trusts me to fix every toy whose batteries have died, find all the pieces that’s missing, glue all the broken pieces back together again. Sadly not all toys can be saved, not even by me. She had the one tractor that was made of this hard plastic, that when she threw it, it fell apart. She would bring me every little piece she could find and I would glue it all back together. Reminds me of the story of Humpty Dumpty.

The next time she brought it to me it was in more pieces, then in more pieces. Finally I started throwing the smaller bits in the trash and just started taping the bigger pieces together. After the…I gave up count…I just put it on our enclosed back porch not wanting to deal with it anymore. I did end up taping it back together again, but leaving it sitting on the back porch. I stared at it. I didn’t have the heart to throw it away. I honestly didn’t know why. It was a simple move, open the garage door, open trash bin, drop toy in trash. Simple right? Could you throw your kid’s favorite toy away?

Many weeks goes by and she and I both forgot about the toy. It was almost lunch time and I thought I would take her with me on the back porch, where the chest freezer is, to pick out a meal. Upon exiting, the first thing she sees is that silly tractor. She began to cry heavy tears and I felt sorry for having left it in plain sight. Now I really need to do something with it. Finally I stick it with a trash bag that I know is going out in the trash bin the next day. I pick a meal out of the freezer and go back inside. I look at her sitting in the living room and she just glares at me.

It has been many months since the toy tractor left and she has found a new toy to replace it with.