Death and Glowsticks

Our five year old nearly cried himself to sleep tonight.

The facts were these: Tuesday evening we, as a family, went to our synagogue to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. It’s a happy holiday which celebrates the completion of the reading of the Torah. You can read more about it in yesterday’s “List on the 3s” if you want.  The evening celebration was focused primarily on the many children in attendance.

Part of the celebration is a series of seven processionals of the Torah scrolls. With lots of singing and dancing.  In much more mavericky times, kids used to go around waving flags. with apples perched atop the pointy flag sticks. And a candle stuck in each apple. Lit. And everyone would go outside and dance around and miraculously not burn anything to the ground.  In more modern times, the next best option was used — glowsticks. So for the sevent processional we all went outside, illuminated like a big Jewish rave. With less X. And more Torah scrolls. Avi was amazed at the power of the glowsticks which he formed into a necklace. And when he connected his necklace to ours, it became hula hoop sized.  He decided to take it upstairs and asked us to turn out the hall light so he could fall asleep by the luminscent purple glow of his creation.  Life was good.

It was still hanging on the doorknob of his room this evening. And when he went to bed, he asked me to turn out the hall light yet again so he could see his neon circle of goodness. Alas, it’s been a couple of days and the glowsticks have lost all of their glow. His creation had run out of juice. And this made him sad. Very sad.

Yes — it was also the fact that it was already 8:30 and he was incredibly tired. But this really seemed to affect him.  I explained with a soft voice that the glow only lasts for a short time. I saw him try to hold back tears bravely before the waterworks started. It was as if he had lost something very dear to him.

Both socKs and I tried our best to calm him down — eventually turning out his night light, the hall light and the light on the humidifier so he could see the glow-in-the-dark stars on his ceiling.  But it didn’t seem the same for him.  He woke up 30 minutes later sobbing that he bumped his head against the wall — not a regular occurrence for him at this age.

socKs made an interesting observation: This was a lot harder for him to take than him finding out that his grandmother had died.  This was his “goldfish in a plastic bag” moment. You know the one — where you win that fish at the fair and sooner or later, no matter how much care you think you’re providing it, the fish dies before you even get to know it.

The glowsticks were around a very short time.  His grandmother? They probably had their time together. He had his memories of her. (I really hope he still does.) But the glowsticks were his creation. They were still new. Yet their shelf-life simply happened to be a lot shorter than he expected.

There’s no repairing the glowsticks. There’s no replacing the batteries in the glowsticks. Sooner rather than later we’re probably going to have to let him come up with the idea of throwing them out. Maybe he’ll realize that there will be other glowsticks in life, experiences which won’t last very long and which can’t be revisited aside from in one’s memory. And that’s okay.

Maybe I’ll realize that, too.