My first REAL heartbreak

perhaps the only one, actually

I was maybe four. It was after we’d moved out of my nana’s house, but back when we still spent a lot of time there. The holidays, birthdays, the random evening when all the kids got together and laughed for hours—all roads led to my mom’s childhood home in South Whittier. Then the ‘kids’ started buying homes of their own or renting apartments with enough space to host, and the centrality of that house slowly dissipated. By the time nana’s schizophrenia made the place unlivable and almost unrecognizable, it had become a childhood memory.

Sometime during this transition, I acquired a Barbie doll that I never used properly. I pointed her like a gun, buzz-cut her hair, colored her with markers, and generally treated her abominably. I think she’s still in my mom’s attic, in some gruesome memory box, but I digress.

The best part of that Barbie doll—the only part I really cared about, if emotional intensity is any indication—was one key and entirely unexpected accessory:

Barbie Cat.

Its head didn’t move. Its tail was stiff and unflinching. Each leg articulated just forward and backwards, and at the same time, like a rabbit’s. Looking back, I know it was an afterthought in that pink box, but four year old me was absolutely obsessed with this tiny, grey, Barbie Cat. I took her everywhere, talked to her in the back of my mom’s rattling Honda Civic, coaxed her to join us in the mall, made her gallop up and down the sticky, black escalator banisters, ‘lost’ her in department store displays, only to ‘find’ her a few minutes later with the help of a supporting cast of other toys.

She was the absolute best.

I don’t remember where I was when I realized that she was gone, gone, gone but we might have already made it to the car. It was my first real memory of panic. She wasn’t in the lunch box. She wasn’t in a pocket. She wasn’t in mom’s purse. We went back to the department store and searched through every open changing room. We retraced the day’s steps entirely. I cried.

Barbie Cat was gone.

To be honest, I haven’t thought much about why the loss hit me so hard, but it was certainly the first time I felt what I now know as grief. The sinking pit in my stomach as we slowly exhausted every option. The tearing sense of knowing that Barbie Cat was somewhere in that mall! The self-judgment for having no one else to blame but myself!! The ire at another kid finding her!!!

As my mom questioned the woman behind the counter of the department store, I distinctly remember thinking that she probably stole Barbie Cat. Because Barbie Cat was just that cool. Perfect, actually. And she’d give it to her own kids.

When I think about it, every major shock I’ve felt since then—missing Wicked because the train was late, getting silver [not gold] for my nerdy 4-H presentation and knowing exactly where I went wrong, being on avail then released for that Nissan Super Bowl commercial [GAH!], running over a baby bird and sobbing for an hour, being dumped by a guy who said he wanted to marry me then cheated on me with the friend-I-shouldn’t-worry-about [blah blah blah]—they all mirrored this first, all-consuming heartbreak.

But why? Was it really about Barbie Cat? Or something else? I can think of only one realistic alternative. Just one.

‘Dad’ was always late. He never stayed long. He left, sometimes with groceries in hand—a bribe to visit me. I still remember his slender silhouette against the over-bright sunlight as he walked through the revolving doors, and the shiny red-brown tile of another indoor mall that’s long since been torn down. My mom says I cried, but I don’t remember. I don’t remember crying after we cursorily traded Christmas gifts in a parking lot either, but that also apparently happened.

All the feelings I felt the last few times I saw him—loss, grief, betrayal—might have been too big for a two year old, but maybe they were just right for a four year old with a beloved Barbie Cat. Maybe I mourned Barbie Cat like someone died, because someone effectively had.

“Are we sure we told him the right place, the right time? He is out there somewhere! It’s probably my fault!! Some other kid is going to have him as a dad!!!”

Different mall, different day, same feeling.

That’s it. That’s the post.

With love,

AIAL