The Dragon and the Unicorn

Many of our friends had children in the year or two before we did, so we received lots of stuff when Sam and Claire were born. Many of the clothes were too big for the babies and the toys were not age appropriate.

We thought at the time that it was weird that people would give us stuff for a one year old when what we had were newborns. Of course, later we realized that our newborns were going to grow and we weren't going to have the time or the money to buy a whole new set of clothes and toys every four months.

The Dragon and the Unicorn were among the gifts we didn't understand at first, but we grew to treasure. We got them from Lynn's cousin Jean. They were towels with hoods for two or three year olds to use to dry off after a bath or a swim. They were enormous next to these babies--what were we going to do with them? They went into the closet with all the other stuff we were never going to use.

Somehow we decided to use them as blankets. Sam and Claire loved them. They were below the age at which children are supposed to benefit from transitional objects, and yet they seemed to take them on as friends. Invariably, they cuddled with their creatures' heads. Both of them took to chewing on the ears of their Dragon and Unicorn. Where they would normally thrash about and cry not knowing what to do when we put them to sleep, with the Unicorn and the Dragon they wrestled, found an appropriate body part (like the ear or the horn) and sucked and chewed away into dreamland.

The Dragon and Unicorn accompanied Sam and Claire on their frequent trips to Maine and on their visits to Montreal, Texas and Minnesota. They are important enough to the babies that we have sought out and purchased body doubles for each of them. Unfortunately, Claire recognizes the difference between the stand-in Unicorn and the original. One time when the Unicorn was in the dryer, I gave Claire the stand-in. She cried bitterly for the twenty minutes that it took for the real Unicorn, still damp, to be ushered to her side.

The Unicorn and the Dragon are disgusting. Sam and Claire spend an inordinate amount of time with the ears of the beasts in their mouths. Their ears are discolored and spongy. There is no good time to wash them since the soak, pre-wash, wash and dry take hours. They are cleaned once a week. Even when the Unicorn springs from the dryer, its ears are a dull brown rather than the sparkling white they were originally.

We believe that Claire is a changeling. She comes originally from the planet Xenon. Every night she rides her Unicorn back there and communes with a whole planet of bald, squeeling, grinning babies. In the morning she comes back and spends the day on earth. Without the Unicorn she would lose touch with her people.

Once, a number of months ago, I put the Dragon on my head and played with Sam as if I was the Dragon. I had tried this before with Claire and it was a big mistake. She had a total meltdown. She did not want her father and her Unicorn to be confused in this way. Sam is a little more easy going. He was VERY EXCITED to have the opportunity to play with the a real live Dragon. He screamed, bounced, grabbed the Dragon's head. Occasionally he would look back at his mom with disbelief--"Look, Mom, see what's happening!"