What's lost and found: The cat sweater story

A frantic search turns into a journey.

Our 9-year-old daughter came downstairs from her bedroom very concerned recently and announced that she could not find her favorite sweater: fuzzy and gray, with a pink cat on it, a ridiculous size 4T that absolutely has not fit her for years and that she hasn’t squeezed into in months but nonetheless she has resisted giving away.

My wife and I looked at each other nervously, wondering if maybe we had dispatched it during a recent drawer cleanout. But we nevertheless started asking the pertinent questions: Did you look here? Did you look there?

Maybe it’s not where you think it is.

As our daughter answered those questions, assuring us she had looked everywhere, her concern shifted abruptly into tears and then sobbing. My wife worked on consoling her while I attended to something our 4-year-old suddenly desperately needed (I can’t even remember what it was, but it was probably a true crisis like he needed someone to stay in the bathroom while he pooped).

After about five minutes, my wife and I shifted roles.

Our 7-year-old was supposed to be picked up from a friend’s house 10 minutes ago, but as irrational as it might have seemed our oldest clearly needed something more important and urgent.

I asked her if she would like me to come upstairs with her and check again to see if I could find her sweater. I was 90% sure I wouldn’t find it, but none of our kids are experts in finding their own stuff.

There was a 10% chance I would be a hero; in the meantime, I could think about what to say if I wasn’t.

We walked upstairs, and I looked through her sweater/sweatshirt drawer, then her shirt drawer, then her sister’s sweater drawer. No luck. We looked in a pile of clothes in the closet. I kept hoping it would magically appear.

No cat sweater.

Our daughter was shaking at this point.

“I feel like I’ll never be able to have my good memories without it,” she said, over and over.

And suddenly my hunch was growing: This wasn’t just about a sweater.

Yes, our daughter is sentimental and has a hard time getting rid of ANYTHING. She’s been like that her whole life, and the tendency tightened during the pandemic as new objects became a proxy at times for new experiences.

But maybe this was about tying an object to memory — about something even deeper.

Getting older. Being 9, with 10 fast approaching – which seems impossibly young and carefree to almost any adult, but also an age with complications. You’re a “tween” by some definitions. Friends and social groups are starting to be more important, and increased freedom is both exciting and a little scary.

Right before the start of the school year, as she entered fourth grade, we got her a watch that she can use to text and call us. It was the latest step in living in that dual world: Letting go but staying connected.

She does great with it and is very responsible about who she walks home from school with, what time she will be home from a friend’s house and other practical matters. There are times when it seems like she’s already 14 and wants to be hitting fast-forward. But this was her telling us that it’s all a little scary, too.

The sweater helped her remember what it’s like to be 4. Maybe sometimes she still wants to be 4? I ask her that, pretty sure I already know the answer.

“Yeah,” she said, nodding her head and still crying but starting to steady her breathing.

Is it hard being the oldest child? Is it hard being 9?

Yes, yes.

And here I get a window into her and a chance to reflect back on her – to go beyond the superficial or the logistical questions that can dominate days. More importantly, I close my mouth, open my ears and listen.

As we talk, I get to share with her how I feel — and how it feels to be a parent of three amazing kids who keep getting older and older.

I tell her that this time of year (early November is when this all happened) tends to make me emotional and sentimental. It’s the time of my birthday, so I think about aging more. The seasons are changing, the light is different, the sky is graying more, and it feels like we’re holding on tighter to the day while sinking into the night.

I don’t tell her that at dinner with my wife a few days prior, tears started coming down my cheeks just from thinking about our kids getting older.

I tell her that we’ve never been parents of a 9-year-old, or 10 or 11, and that it’s hard for us, too. Every age she is, we’ll be going through for the first time, too.

When the time is right, I tell her that we’ll keep looking for the sweater – that maybe it will turn up – but even if it doesn’t, she can still have those memories of her younger self. I nudge her into the idea that you can only be the age you are, and that living too far into the past or future can rob you of the present.

But I assure her that in the present, she can still feel protected – that she’s never alone, that she can just exhale and hand things to us when responsibilities feel too heavy. She can still feel little when she needs to, and big when she wants to, because that’s what 9 feels like to her.

After a while, I remind her that I had been thinking about our need to have some 1-on-1 time – a daddy-daughter date, as we have called it for years. In the ultimate sign of the times, I had sent her a message about it on her watch, asking her what she might like to do, a week prior.

She had sweetly sent back two voice memos, which maybe foreshadowed this whole sweater event in retrospect.

“In the summer, maybe you could take me to a pool,” she said in the first memo. “Or maybe we could go somewhere like the Children’s Museum or Science Museum. Or we could go to dinner and then you could take me to a movie.”

These are all things that we’ve done, just the two of us, but almost always lately it’s all of us. Back when she was 4 and her younger sister was 1, my wife would help the younger one take epic naps on gray afternoons, and I would take her on big adventures.

Then her younger sister got older, and she stopped taking naps, and she realized she was missing out on big adventures and always wanted to tag along – a new kind of fun with all four of us or just me and the two girls, but different, sure. Then their younger brother was born, a few months later a pandemic started, and next thing you know she’s halfway to college.

I don’t say any of that, but I tell her that I miss our one-on-one fun. I tell her I think I have a plan where we can get away for a few hours that week, just the two of us.

Her brother has followed us upstairs by that point, and he’s turned on one of the loudest toys he can find. I can hear that my wife has retrieved our 7-year-old from the neighbor’s house, though I also later learn that she is completely covered in sand and needs to have her coat washed.

I ask our oldest daughter if there are any other things she has that we should absolutely, under no circumstances, ever give away. Not saying that’s what happened with the sweater, but just in case. She points out a few things, one of them being the stuffed monkey I won for her the first time we went to the State Fair – back when she was the center of attention, the only child.

We end up postponing our daddy-daughter date because our neighborhood babysitter’s parents both come down with COVID. It was going to be a win-win: the younger kids get a fun night at home while the two of us escape. Instead, I take all three kids to an indoor playground while my wife attends her Wednesday night class for her PhD program. If the change in plans is a disappointment, she doesn’t show it.

The next week, everything comes together. As most modern parents know, any given day feels like it takes nine things (minimum) to fall into place just to pull off something beyond the routine. She takes off right after school for a friend’s house, but I tell her: 5 o’clock, be home. Just me and you.

She’s there on time, as always. We walk the dog together, and already I can feel the connection. We hop in the car, and she starts telling me about school in ways that she otherwise doesn’t. We’re headed to the Mall of America because if you want fun on a Wednesday evening in November, that’s where you go.

We arrive, and she’s amped. Sometimes she runs up ahead of me or talks about something like she’s already a teenager. Sometimes she wants me to carry her like she’s 4 again. We laugh. We play mini golf. We zip through some amusement park rides.

We drop into the new Barbie café and splurge a little on dinner. She’s seen the Barbie movie countless times already, and we’re taking a dizzying number of pictures. She eats three pink pancakes in the time it might take you to tie your shoes. Then she demands to roller skate, and what am I going to say? I want to say yes and have to say yes.

We stay a little longer than planned, and I’m trying not to check the time too much. The two younger kids have bedtimes soon, my wife’s class is over and she’s at the end of a 12-hour day, the babysitter needs to be walked home.

We’ve stolen a few hours, but now it’s time to go. I clumsily tell her that I want the night to be something she’ll remember when she’s 25. She either gets it or knows that I really want her to get it and assures me that she will.

It feels great and not enough all at once, which I suppose is how life feels sometimes whether you are 9 or 47.

I decide to hang onto the great.