This week I felt curious about…

My favorite childhood stuffed animal



I remember falling in love with my favorite stuffed animal, Flopsy. I don't remember the moment I opened the Christmas gift but I do remember never letting Flopsy out of my arms as a child once she was mine.


Sleeping with my Flopsy

My Uncle Nick gave us the best Christmas gifts. He had a weird rule about his gift giving, too. He gave us Christmas gifts until we turned 16, then he would stop. It was super strange because my brother is 6 years older than me, so I kept receiving gifts after Tim turned 16. That must have been awkward for Tim. Obviously, Tim had received gifts before I was born, it was just a weird rule.

My daughter Bailey found another Flopsy online for me for an Easter gift.


My Flopsy is on the right, well loved and missing an ear.


I was talking to my dad about Flopsy over email recently. I asked him if he remembered the year Uncle Nick gave me Flopsy. He said,
"What a bouquet of memories. I remember the year you got Flopsy. Usually Nick spent Christmas with us, opening presents in the morning and then going with us to Grammie and Grampa's for the rest of the day. That year, though, he spun out in the snow on Rt. 3 on his way to us, turned right around for home and stayed there. A couple of days later we went to his apartment in Andover so he could give you Flopsy and Tim his gift."

The Christmas gifts I remember best from Uncle Nick are, in chronological order:
Age 3: Velvet patchwork soccer ball
Age 4: Flopsy
Age 6: Porcelain doll
Age 10: Leather jacket
Age 13: Boom box
Age 14: Polaroid camera
Age 16: Fancy watch

It turns out my Uncle Nick had deep-seated emotion problems. He left his own family, a wife and 2 kids, before I was born. I never met them. I would see him once a year over Christmas. He moved away from the East Coast to Oregon in the early 2000’s. We wrote each other 1 letter after he moved, I never heard from him again. He died in 2020, alone.

The police tracked down his relatives through me. I’m in the Federal DNA database because of the arrest in 2009 (Read about the arrest in my post Mentors and Travel). I gave the officer my dad's phone number who in turn got the officer in touch with Nick's daughter, who, unfortunately, I’ve never met. My first cousin. Sad.


My Uncle Nick on the right between my grandfather and Uncle Jaque, my father on the left, enjoying Christmas dinner.


My dad’s family is complicated. My grandfather, my dad’s dad, had a temper when my dad and his siblings were growing up. It’s been a lifelong practice of my dads to remain calm. It seems that anything that pokes my dads temper is unwelcome. Neutral and calm. An unwavering practice of his own state of contentment.


Even when I was a baby, I loved my stuffed animals and many attempts were made to provide me with my favorite.

When I was little, under 12, it seemed to me, my parents gave great thought and care to what I wanted for Christmas gifts.
I remember when I was 12, the last Christmas my parents would celebrate together,  I wanted a butterfly chair, yellow please. I was shocked to wake up Christmas morning to find my yellow butterfly chair in the living room. I loved that thing.


(Side note to self - as I’m remembering that chair it makes me think I want another one. Hahaha. Maybe that design will work for outdoor chairs at Camp. Hmmm. Camp needs folding collapsible chairs that take up little space over the winter. Back to Christmas...)


I loved my stuffed animals above all of my other toys.

My parents were exceptional at presenting small, little gifts as something to cherish. I really appreciate that, especially now, in this day and age, in the throw away culture… One-use plastics, one-use clothing, one-use this, one-use that.

A tradition from my childhood I continue every year is a piece of fruit at the bottom of the stocking. Did your parents do this? I think my dad is happy I carried this tradition on.

Fruit in the stocking came from a few different traditions, oranges represent a gift of gold from Saint Nicholas, the segments of the orange symbolizes sharing, and oranges were rare around the time of the Great Depression so receiving an orange was a real treat. My parents were both born in 1938 so maybe fruit at Christmas was very meaningful to them. My parents took the fruit idea and ran with it, they decided it was the rarity of the fruit that made it special, so they would take great lengths in finding surprising fruit. We would receive star fruit, pomegranate, dragon fruit, persimmons... So fun!

My parents also gave me 2 Christmas lessons, I'm actually just learning them now. Hahahaha.
1. Knowing what a singular big gift is, even if it was a small thing like a butterfly chair, or the 1981 compilation album on vinyl, Dimensions!
2. Christmas isn’t about giving things, it's about celebrating life.

Although, I do love receiving and giving gifts. I have a running Christmas list on my phone each year of what we gave to our family members. Like, what ornament we gave each family member. I also have an entire wildest dreams list of gifts to give and receive. It seems like I never run out of ideas.




Passed out next to Flopsy. Snuggling up to Flopsy brought me comfort. Just looking at Flopsy still brings me comfort.

Christmas with my daughter has been, buy all of the things for you that you want, plus some surprise things.
I have been bamboozled into the, buy it, buy it, buy it, culture! Ugh.

My kid on the other hand, wants experiences. What a clever girl.



Christmas Day with my pile of toys. Flopsy must have been safely tucked in bed while I was opening gifts.

This picture of me sitting on the fireplace hearth is around the age I was when my parents had me tested with the child Psychologist Dr. Reiver in Cohasset, Ma. I wasn't learning how to read and I was hyperactive. Dyslexia and ADHD was the diagnosis. I knew I wasn't like other kids, and that stressed me out. I didn't know it was called stress, but I did know I was different and that made me sad. As it turns out, up to 20% of the human population has dyslexia and 35% of people with dyslexia have ADHD. Not only that, I have the double deficit dyslexia. Phonological dyslexia, difficulty associating sounds with letters or groups of letters and rapid naming dyslexia, difficulty retrieving words or information. Basically I have all of the problems associated with dyslexia and ADHD, math, executive functioning, spelling...

What happened for me was, I became very creative. I would draw and paint, and create stories with my stuffed animals. Traditional school has always been difficult for me. Reading a lesson, comprehending the information, then taking a test, regurgitating the information by answering questions on a multiple choice test. Ugh. The multiple choice test questions are framed to try and trip you up with one or two words off from the correct answer. That's not learning for me, to me, that's finding details. For me, learning is listening to as much information I can get my hands on, and then making connections between information. I love to learn, just not how traditional school teaches.

I love listening to people's stories. I love random facts. I love to discover beauty. But, because I don't fit into the typical way of learning, or processing information, I often feel stressed. A lot of my life revolves around calming my nervous system, it's stressful living in a world made for typical thinkers. It's sort of like being left-handed in a right-handed world. I'm right-brained in a left-brained world. I take comfort in little things, like Flopsy. I'll take the connections where I can find them.

Back to Christmas.

I remember Kate Watson-Smyth saying on her podcast, The Great Indoors, she thinks, A Want, A Need, A Wear, A Read, is the way to give at Christmas. Mind you, she puts up her tree December 22nd and takes it down Boxing Day, 26th. She’s British and it seems she is very practical. I might be becoming practical like my parents, Kate Watson Smyth, and basically everyone who was alive before 1900.

A Want, A Need, A Wear, A Read, is what we did last year and what we are doing this year.

We have one baby in our family right now, little Wesley, I'll be looking for a stuffed animal for him this year, I wonder if it will become his favorite.
I wonder if the stuffed animal you give to a little one this year will be their favorite for a lifetime. 

Today I Felt Dyslexic. I leaned into the discomfort and did one small action towards my goal. It was scary and difficult but that’s ok. Time is on our side.

Much love,

Liz