I have written this post in my head about seven hundred times, at least. I have also written it on scraps of paper three times but not gotten round to typing it up.
I told myself it was because I don’t have time but the truth is that this absolutely kills me.
We lost Elephant.
Elephant is Rupert’s meme. A meme, in case you didn’t know, is one of those square blankets with an animal at the corner. We call them meme’s because they poke their head around the door and squeak me me and go and cuddle their owner. Rupert had about eight memes but he had one that was an elephant, and it was his favourite.
In time it became his only meme and when Xavier came along he gave him all of his others because Elephant was more than enough for him.
We took him everywhere and had a couple of close calls with losing him and decided he should stay at home from now on. Apart from that one last time when we took him to Nannies. And lost him.
Nannies house is around the corner from ours and the only facts we know is that he went missing somewhere between leaving Nanny’s front door and getting inside our front door. We realised five minutes after getting in the house. We rang Nannies, we walked the way to and from nannies about five times. My dad went out on his bike around the block. I went in the shops we pass walking home and asked if anyone had handed in a blue elephant comforter (they thought I was weird). My sister went driving around in her car. I went walking around the park incase a dog had picked him up and took him there.
The morning after we lost him I came downstairs and Rupert was watching a documentary about elephants. I looked at his Dad confused and he told me that Rupert had asked to “watch elephants”. It was absolutely heartbreaking.
I went walking the route for about two days after, looking in bushes and on garden walls for Elephant.
I posted on social media but he wasn’t to be found.
A kind lady replied to my post saying she had the same elephant snuggle that he little boy hadn’t used and I could have it. I picked it up and left him on our front door for Rupert. When he picked him up he said “But where’s the other Elephant?”
It looked exactly the same as his but he knew it wasn’t him.
Now we have a collection of different elephant memes, that Rupert loves to bits and I don’t think he remembers that his original Elephant isn’t there.
But I do.
I still search for him every time I walk past the bushes on the way to my Mums. I still get upset wondering where the fuck he went! We noticed within five minutes! Where are you Elephant?!?!
If you didn’t know, and hadn’t worked out already, I am extremely sentimental, hence the job as a photographer.
I think what it really comes down to though, as I have pondered over Elephant for this last year and a half, is Mummy guilt. I’ve put onto Elephant’s misplacement all of the fears and worries of all the fuck ups I may be making as a Mummy.
The one thing I take from it is that I still think about him and I still worry about him, and for as long as I do I know that I’m being the best Mum I can be for my babies.
It’s insanely ironic that we can’t find Xavier’s owl and that Mary threw her unicorn out of them pram today! You’d think I’d learn.