Jessie (Toy Story).png

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And the answer is: Very. Like, a lot.

The funny thing is, when we first got our music in fall 2018, as part of a concert I sang with my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver area, I didn’t recognize this song, just noting that it was by Randy Newman (“Mr. Mucus,” as far as I’m concerned—sorry, fans!). Then something our conductor said about Toy Story jogged my memory and I looked it up. How could I have forgotten this lovely rendition by Jessie the cowgirl doll? She’s explaining to Woody how she ended up in a toy warehouse: she was Emily’s favorite toy until Emily grew up. The song ends with Jessie being left in a donations box by the side of the road. She’s bought by a toy collector and ends up in storage.

That memory released a flood of nostalgia about my son’s childhood and his interactions with the TS franchise. There he is, running around the house with his Batman cape on, shouting his version of Buzz Lightyear’s motto: “To definity and beyond!” (It was a sad day when he got the word right.) And there we are after attending a showing of TS2 with Gideon saying, “I don’t like Stinky Pete!” To which I kept saying, “But honey, you’re not supposed to like him. He’s the bad guy.” To which he’d reply, “I don’t like Stinky Pete!”

Amid the humor, cleverness, and new animation techniques, it’s fair to say that all of the TS movies are about loss: what happens when children grow up. Somebody at Disney realized what a powerful symbol toys could be for that inevitable progression from childhood to adult. As Jessie says to Woody after our song, “You never forget kids like Emily and Andy. But they forget you.” Here’s another way of saying it:

The most resonant truth about children is that they disappear. Slowly, gradually, but eventually. Children in that sense are clocks, marking the passage of time with each new stage of growth. To see a child disappear – or rather, to become aware in any acute way of their disappearance – is to become aware of losing something you have loved more than anything you have loved in your life before, or will again. (from “Life is about loss and letting go – especially with our children,” by Tim Lott in The Guardian)

It seems so unfair that you only get to go through the stages in your children’s lives that one time! I will never again get to go in my son’s bedroom to wake him up for school and pretend to nibble at his eyebrows. I will never again pick out a chewable vitamin from the bottle for him to take at breakfast, showing him the color. (As I recall, the purple ones were quite rare.) I will never again tell him a Sandy and Stripey story as we drive somewhere. (They were pretty lame stories, I have to admit, but he seemed to like them.) I will never again . . . ad infinitum. All of us have those memories, don’t we? Even if we don’t have children of our own.

But guess what? However teary I may get about the loss of my little boy (and I do get that way periodically, believe me—even as I’m writing this essay), there’s now a 24-year-old man in his place. (His birthday was yesterday, and he proved himself to be truly his mother’s son when he requested a bread machine for his present.) We had a great phone conversation discussing his papergrading woes (he’s a grad assistant at Virginia Tech), with me reiterating my advice to set a timer for 15-20 minutes per paper. I got to ask him what he remembered about his dislike of Stinky Pete. He reiterated his view that TS2 and TS3 were nowhere near the original. (I disagreed.) He’s off on his own. And however much I’d love to have that little boy back, even for a day, I can tell myself that I did indeed enjoy his childhood. And how I can enjoy and appreciate the adult he’s become.

Well, perhaps that’s enough goopiness for one post. Be sure to watch the video of the song below: