When Polina was born, my husband’s sister gave her a wooden board with cut out letters that spell her name. It is a neat present, as the letters fit perfectly into the board and Polina for a while had a love affair with the letter “n,” then the letter “a.” Every night before she goes to bed, I put all her toys back where they belong, and reassemble anything disassembled to make sure nothing is missing. The Little People go back to their playground, the cars next to their track, the balls in their wooden cut outs, the alphabet cards back in alphabetical order. My husband calls it OCD, but I call it being thorough. On a certain level, though, he is right. If something is missing, I start to feel anxious until everything is in its right place, where it belongs. I’m not debilitated by this, though, just affected. In fact, I can be pretty disorganized, and I compensate by organizing.
A couple weeks ago, as I was putting back the wooden letters of my daughter’s name that she scattered across the living room floor, I noticed that the letter “i” was missing. I looked all around for it, but didn’t find it. As it was late and tomorrow was another day, I let it go. The next day, however, I didn’t find it either. This created some anxiety as not long before that, I noticed two out of four magnetic blocks I bought for her also missing. (These things are pretty cool as well. You can make a Microsoft-like logo with them, or pull them back and forth vertically. Polina and I both enjoyed playing with them.) I began thinking that she was stashing these somewhere and if I didn’t find her stash, more toys would go “missing.” I looked behind the VCR and DVD players, even looked inside the VCR, under the futon, in all of her toy boxes, behind the jumper and doll bed and activity table, and didn’t find it. I looked in the kitchen, got on my hands and knees to look along the edges of the cabinets, put on my household gloves to dig through the trash, pulled trash into a different trash bag, and found nothing. I checked under the bed, under the blankets beside the bed, in our table drawers, and still nothing. Even Pete took to searching for it. Every night when I put her toys away, there it was staring at me, P-o-l—na. Polna, which ironically in Russian means “full,” or if you separate “pol” and “na” into two words means “half” and “here.” How ironic that it did feel like her name was only “half here.” I never missed the letter “i” before as much as I did now. I really took it for granted. The letter “P” and the letters “n” and “a” were more popular. “I,” I took for granted.
By the end of a week without the letter “i,” I was feeling pretty anxious and down. My hopes were somewhat raised by the suggestion that Pete may be able to make another letter “i.” He builds half million dollar equipment, after all. Still, I didn’t remember what color the letter was, and without matching the pastels correctly, it would, I thought, always look different. There was some consolation in that I found the two missing magnetic blocks that looked like a Microsoft logo (they were in the bedroom, on the floor near a laptop, concealed but in plain view). Then this week, Pete asked if I wanted to watch some old films of his family (like, from the 60’s). He got out the old VHS tape (it was converted to VHS, in case you were wondering) and as I was lying comfortably on the futon, he calmly said he found the letter “i.” “What?!” I exclaimed. He took it out of the VCR. Happiness swept over me. Real, pure, happiness. (Sometimes it’s the little things in life that make a difference.) I had looked in there, but it was apparently farther back than I had thought. I put the “i” back where it belonged and her name never looked so complete before. It was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. We settled back to a nice evening together, more relaxing now that everything was back where it belonged.
