The Journey Is The Destination

dearscarlet:

Dear Scarlet,
This week you got a package in the mail. Let me tell you the back story. On my 7th birthday my mom (your grandma) set up a treasure hunt for me. At the very end was this stuffed Simba that I had wanted for weeks. I don’t know what the final clue was, but I know he was in the dryer. I was so excited. From that moment on he went everywhere with me. He went through my Dennis Rodman stage with me and got some food coloring in his little mane and a nose ring. Your great grandma, who you hardly got the chance to know, sewed an orange pocket on his pack. He had fingernail polish on his paws and a crack in the plastic on one of his eyes. I was kind of a lonely kid for no particular reason at all and he meant a lot to me. Eventually he was accidentally thrown away at a friend’s house because I had taken some of my stuff over there in a plastic bag. I was devastated. I was like 12 by then and too much time had passed to buy another, there was no ebay back then, not that I even wanted another. A few months later your Aunt Jaime or somebody found another one in a drug store at this really tiny town near us. It was the kind of place where toys got dusty because people only really went there for medicine. I was almost a teenager by that time, and I just resented the new Simba. I tied a big golden ribbon around his neck and demanded that my parents just shipped him to another kid somewhere. 5 or 6 years after that I saw it in the top of their closet. I just rolled my eyes and forgot about it. I had too many other things on my mind back then, like the fact that I’d just fallen in love with your father and playing hooky from school. A month or so ago we went to the Disney Store in the mall. They had Simba toys there and you really wanted one. I called Grandma right away and asked if she still had that other one in their closet. She said she’d look. Two days ago he came in a shoebox, golden ribbon still around his neck. You love him. We watched the movie and everything. I can’t even really explain how it makes me feel to see you with it, his fur is still new and he hasn’t been on many adventures yet. I walked in to check on you sleeping last night and saw you all snuggled up with him. I kind of teared up. I don’t know, it just pulls at my heartstrings. Circle of life, dude.