objet d'amour

An anguished cry, pierced the air, and my daughter's heart. Blood curdling was how she described it. The sound had come from my little grand daughter's room, where she lay napping. Up the stairs my daughter flew, her heart in her throat. She threw open the door. Her eyes were on her child in an instant. There, in the crib, stood her little girl, smiling sweetly and welcomingly. And there, on the floor, lay a little hair elastic. Ahhhhh, so that's all it was. My grand daughter has developed a fixation with little things, right now, it's hair elastics, and she clutches them in her hand all day. She won't let go, even at meal time, and squawks when her mother washes her little hands, around the elastic of course. They are always pried out of her sleeping hand at nap time and bed time, but this time it was missed. The scream was the sound of separation, of being parted from her objet d'amour. Childhood is a training ground for the rest of our lives. Little pains, little partings, they teach the heart to heal. Resilience, the wonderful compensation.