When I met Tabby on “the good ol’ Boston and Maine” I don’t believe I recognized how much my life was going to change. She was an amazing woman of the rarest kind, always generous to those around her, a great mother, and a wonderful wife. I wish she was still here now… But alas, she is gone from this world and I had to bare the burden of her departure in so many ways. I will never forget how hard we laughed at the response she received when she told me the reaction of her mother and son when she announced she had met another man on the train. From how she described it, Johnny (bless his soul, I know he was only six) looked like a ghost when he thought he may have a little sibling on the way and her mother… good lord, I think she may have experienced a tiny heart attack at the mere mention of it! From what Tabby had explained to me about her family, I was desperately hoping that if I played my cards right I would be able to impress them, and perhaps be an influence for the better in all of their lives.
When you come from a family that is consistently disappointed in the choices you make, you want to make it easier for your own child. You want to let them know that they can do whatever makes them happy and have them know you’ll always be proud of them. My parents and siblings have given up on me I think, but when I had Tabby, that didn’t matter. I was doing what I loved in drama, and I had a woman I loved and who loved me as well as a son who looked to me to set the example. That was by far, the happiest period in my life. And it would not last long.
Remembering back to when I met Johnny for the first time, I knew just how to win his approval. Few people know how children think, but after refusing to conform to my parents expectations for so long I like to think I can still think as imaginatively and creatively as a young child. So, when I met him for the first time, I knew just how to win him over. While I sat in the living room discussing topics of the various educations I had received and past experiences that had formed my passion for the theatre and teaching, I pretended not to notice little Johnny (for he still was just a little boy) wander over to my shopping bag an inspect the wrapping. I looked over, as if in a side note, and told Johnny not open the bag. Of course, what six year old could resist that temptations – certainly none that I know of. As I began to carry on my dry conversation with Tabitha’s mother (which was reminiscent of so many conversations I had had with my own parents), I saw Johnny open the package to see what magical “prop” I was hiding.
He couldn’t have given me a better response upon opening it. He screamed in fright at the sight of the armadillo. “I told you he’d open the bag,” I said to Tabby jovially, as she hadn’t thought my plan would work. I never realized how important that little armadillo would become for Johnny as he grew up and got older. After Tabby’s death, I think Johnny came to see the armadillo as more than just a stuffed animal. Long after its claws were gone, its tail fell off, and the stuffing came out, and its sides collapsed, and its nose broke in half, and its glass eyes disappeared, he still kept it. I think it symbolized, for him in particular, times of great happiness. When I gave him the armadillo he had a loving mother, a best friend in Owen Meany (a rather strange young boy, such a shame his loss was), a new father-figure who hadn’t yet sought the bottom of a glass to help himself get through the day, and cousins who would also play with the armadillo with him as a pastime. I honestly couldn’t be happier that something I got for him, let alone my very first gift for Johnny, could come to mean so much to him. I just wish it wasn’t also a constant reminder that his current life would never match the joy of his past. I think that this armadillo may be a large reason why Johnny is constantly trapped in the past. Perhaps he would have been better off without it, now that I’m able to look back in hindsight, but that’s how my life goes I guess. Trying to please the people around me only to have it backfire… I think I’ll stop telling the story for now, and resume after I’ve had another glass or two… 