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Pink Panther
 Jamie
received a small stuffed "Pink Panther" for her 3rd
birthday. Just a few months later, we
moved far from home. When we
moved, he became her best friend and imaginary brother. He became a member of our family when we
moved to Largo, Florida. I think
Jamie was feeling a bit sad for leaving the only home she had ever known and
maybe a bit scared, with a “babysitter”, which she almost never had to have
and with Mommy and Daddy gone for long hours working. Her sisters didn’t spend much time playing
with her either. They were tired from
the long bus ride to and from school and then the homework. There were tons and tons of homework. Even though my girls were a grade level
above the students there, they still had tons and tons of homework. Until this move, I had been home with
Jamie as a full time Mom. And, I had
been home when my girls came home from school. We spent a lot of time together for the three years before
this. We were always playing and
cuddling and having fun together. We
went outside and rode bikes and took walks and watched the train go by. Jamie had been use to being the center of
everyone’s world up until we moved.
Now, she wasn’t the center of anyone’s world. She could hardly even get anyone’s
attention because we were all so tired mostly from spending so much time on
the road. So she decided to make her
newest birthday present the center of her world. She decided that he would become the family she no longer had
in all of us.
  
Pink
panther and Jamie were always having long talks, even when the stuffed animal
pink panther was still in her room.
The imaginary Pink Panther brother would be sitting beside Jamie at
the supper table with us. She would get mad at her sisters or me for not
setting Pink Panther a place at the table.
She would say he is a member of our family now and we have to treat
him nice or he will go away. She
would be talking to him, not to the rest of us. Supper-time seemed the only time we had to share with each other
as a family on what was going on with each of us. Pink Panther even went to Church with us, and she would tell
him to sit still and be quiet and then chatter herself to him the hole
time. She even called him on the
phone! (There was a toll free number with a recording available).
We
weren’t able to find any of those fantastic jobs we had been told existed in
Florida and we were driving for 3-4 hours per day to get to and from work and
then working 8-12 hour days. So, the
family that had been use to spending all their time together, became
strangers. We barely saw each other,
much less had any quality time together.
When we were home, all we had time for was homework and
cleaning/cooking. So, it didn’t take
long for me to decide it was time to go back “home”. My husband was very upset and said it was
his dream to live in Florida. I told
him, he could stay and try to make it work, and if it did we would come back
when he was set up in a good job. I
told him I just couldn’t live like that, spending all my time away from my
girls. I told him we didn’t even feel
like a family anymore and I was going home before we grew too far apart. He decided he couldn’t stay without us, so
he came back home too.
A
few weeks after we were back home, Jamie quit chattering to the Pink Panther
very much. She was busy playing with
her toys and her sisters like she did before we had moved. I was working, but it was less than a 5
minute drive to work and I only worked a few hours a day. So, I was home when the girls got home
from school and so we all got to spend more time together like we use
to. A few months after we moved back
“home”, the Pink Panther quit showing up for dinner. I had even gotten to the point that I set
a plate for him because Jamie had thrown such a fit about how none of us
believed her that he was really a real Pink Panther and he really was her
brother. Then, before long, he was
hardly ever around. One of the girls
asked about him one evening at supper, and Jamie said that Pink Panther moved
“very far away” and wasn’t ever coming back again, because we didn’t believe
in him. She refused to discuss him
any further. And the pink panther
stuffed animals went up on a shelf, never to be played with again. We moved once more after that, but it was
only a few miles out to the country.
She was so busy exploring that she forgot she even had the Pink
Panther. Many years later, when Jamie
didn’t seem to like me very much, and I had to find a way to get her to at
least be friends with me. I hunted
high and low for those little stuffed animals. I found them in a box and on her 18th birthday, I
had a Pink Panther Cake made and gave her back her two stuffed Pink
Panthers. It didn’t help much getting
her to be friends with me, but we all thought it was a cute gesture on my
part. What Mom’s go through just to
get our kids to love us. 
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