Crazy for Care Bears

Our four year old has a passion for Care Bears, so I recently bought him “Perfect Panda” to add to his collection. This set off an obsession with the little furry guys. One morning, he retreated to his room for quite some time. It eventually dawned on me that he had been quiet for too long. You know that revelation… quiet, out of my sight, too long. What was he getting into?

Well, I hurried to his room, opened the door, and what I found was nothing short of angelic. He had taken his little brother’s baby blankets and swaddled each of his Care Bears and laid them in a perfect row on his bedroom floor (pictured below). The Care Bears really brought out a nurturing part of him that even I was amazed by. I’ve always known that he was a sweet, sensitive little boy, but this was over the top!

For the next couple of weeks he kept up this vigil. Each night he swaddled his Care Bears and laid them in bed with him. Eventually, the swaddling blankets morphed into capes and his nurturing morphed into teaching his Care Bears how to be a Super Hero Sidekick (watching too much Sky High, I guess). But that didn’t matter to me. I will always have the image of him and his swaddled Care Bears ingrained in my mind.

When I see him hold his first born child, I’m sure it will take me back to this surprising moment. I opened the door of his room expecting to find trouble, but instead, I found an expectation of the man he would become.