Three Elmos
When my daughter was barely over a year old, she entered — as many kids her age do — into the Church of Elmo: an act of worship whose potency is made both stronger and more peculiar given that, at the time, she had never actually watched Sesame Street, having merely seen the cast of characters and studied (furiously, as Lucy studies all things) a handful of book covers at my parents' house from when I was a child.
This in and of itself is not particularly noteworthy -- Elmo's success was a firestorm-shaped catalyst that consumed Sesame Street. But where things got a little strange was when she learned of Cookie Monster, a creature whom she instantly and persistently renamed Blue Elmo.
Lucy is, amongst many other great things, forthright, and so every day for the past nine months, if you utter the phrase "Cookie Monster" in her presence — let alone point to a depiction of him while doing so — she will immediately and forcefully correct you: No. Blue Elmo.Enough people who read this blog have met Lucy in real life that they can attest to this.
It is hard to overstate the memetic contagion of Blue Elmo. Not only do I often forget Blue Elmo's original name, but so powerful and consistent is Lucy's insistence that I've had to have a conversation with a quizzical parent from pre-school who wondered why their kid had started referring to Cookie Monster by a different name. The checkout ladies at our grocery store know Blue Elmo; the woman who runs our butchery knows Blue Elmo; Lucy's parents and cousins and aunts and uncles know Blue Elmo. Humphrey once said that (paraphrasing) things are not just what they are but what they seem to be -- Blue Elmo is, more than anything else, Blue Elmo.
A recent development has proved trickier.
Last month, Lucy woke up from a characteristic slumber to inform us that her favorite stuffed animal — a teddy bear whom we, in an admitted dearth of creativity, named Bear — had a new name: Elmo.
After an Arrival-esque day of mutual understanding and cooperative negotiation, we settled on a bit of a re-org for the three Elmos: the animal formerly known as Bear would assume the full title of Lucy Elmo, and the original wielder of the moniker would be demoted to Red Elmo, and of course Blue Elmo stays Blue Elmo.
Stories about your children are shibboleths. If you had told me this exact story — if you can even call it a story — three years ago, I would have fairly quickly arrived at the conclusion that you were well-meaning, but somehow simultaneously boring and insane. I did not have a Lucy then; I do now.
Sometimes storytelling (and writing, a subset thereof) is an act of communication; sometimes it is an act of preservation:
- On the one hand, I can't think of any better way than this story to express the ecstasy of parenthood; on the other hand, as Rilke says, most experiences are unspeakable.
- But blog posts are chunks of amber, and I write about the three Elmos to perpetuate (if only for me!) a beatitude.