Letter to My Daughter: The Day Chippy Died
“The most beautiful moments in our lives lurk beneath the weight of a heavy awkwardness.”
Dear Kira,
Let me take you back to third grade. Mrs. Ro walks into the classroom with an electrifying announcement, one that sends the whole gaggle of already jittery nine-year-olds into a euphoric frenzy: we were getting a new class pet. Chippy. Chippy the Guinea Pig.
Have you ever seen 32 young hearts melt in perfect unison, Kira? Well, that’s the “Chippy Effect.” You had to see him, honey. He was so cute. So cuddly. What we wouldn’t do for the little Chipster. We’d caress his downy, brown-and-white fur, we’d pass him lettuce and carrots through the narrow bars of his cage. He was ours…and we were his.
And the best part? Every student in the third grade would enjoy the pleasure and the privilege of welcoming the beloved Chippy into their homes for one special weekend. Oh, how I anticipated my turn to extend hospitality to this fluffy friend.
Alas — the day arrived. My young little heart bursted with pride and anticipation that fateful Friday as I gingerly carried the cage out of the classroom and into my mother’s Toyota Previa. I felt all those eyes on me — and I’ll admit, Kira. it felt good. That’s right, folks. Chippy’s coming with me.
Walking in the front door of my house, our dog, JJ, began to bark and encircle my feet like a shark. JJ was good-natured and mild-mannered in the extreme, so this took me by surprise. Like a firstborn-turned-sibling, I suppose he wasn’t used to sharing the attention. I understood where JJ was coming from, I did, but he had to understand that this was my time with Chippy. Chippy!
That whole day Friday I barely left Chippy’s side. His cage was nestled on the couch in our upstairs playroom, and I sat on the couch right by his side. I read Harry Potter aloud to Chippy (he was a fan); I listened to the Red Hot Chili Peppers with Chippy (he was a fan); I chatted on AIM near Chippy (he was…intrigued). You’ll learn this, Kira — sometimes the sweetest moments in life are simply doing what you love with the who you love. The weekend with Chippy was turning out exactly how I imagined it would…
The Davises, our next-door neighbors, had invited us over for Saturday lunch. I didn’t feel great about leaving Chippy behind, but my father insisted that bringing him along was not an option, and I figured I’d be close enough to check on him often. “I’ll be back, Chippy!” I assured him. “Don’t worry, little man, I’ll come check on you!”
Around thirty minutes into lunch, I was itching to check on ol’ Chip. What if he needs me? I snuck away from the table and scurried back home.
It was precisely the moment that I reached the landing at the top of the stairs that time began to slow. I still remember the image: all of that timothy hay, strewn chaotically across the light pink carpeting.
Then, like a scene in a movie, my eyes trailed upwards. I saw the cage, toppled from its perch atop the couch, now languishing on its side like a beached whale, the roof blown right off the top, the cage door still swinging ominously from the momentum generated by its tumble. My eyes trailed upwards still. There was JJ, sitting calmly in the corner, with just the faintest smirk of guilt on his mug.
But it was the last thing I saw — it was that last thing that sticks with me to this day. The last thing I saw was Chippy himself. Chippy the Guinea Pig. The beloved Chippy. His head, jutting out at an almost perpendicular angle to the rest of his body; his limbs, contorted in an unnatural, ungodly arrangement; his eyes, once the very seat of his joyous disposition, now twitching in horror, agape in pain.
Chippy died that day. As the authorities (read: my father) set about sanitizing the crime scene, I locked myself in my room and did not soon emerge. I cried and I cried, Kira. I cried for many reasons — my grief was not just intense, but nuanced, and layered, as grief usually is.
Of course, I cried for Chippy — a hero, a giant among rodents, taken far too soon. But I also cried for myself. What will become of me? I will be tried for this crime — if not in a court of law then in the court of public opinion. In the unforgiving tribunal of the Third Grade. They’ll say I should have known better. They’ll say I should have protected Chippy from his enemies, foreign, yet especially, apparently, domestic. They will ostracize me. They will whisper about me. I will be a villain, an outsider.
I numbed myself in my adolescent vices: frozen pizza in one hand, Playstation 2 controller in the other. “Noey, can I come in?,” my mother would softly inquire from the other side of the door. “I’d like to speak with you, honey.” “Mom! Go away!” I would yell in return, without even pausing my game of NBA Live 2001. “And I’m not going back to school so you may as well deal with it!”
Later that night, another knock. This time, I didn’t wait for my mother’s voice. “Mom, you need to stop. Go. Away.” “Um…hey dude,” said a voice I wasn’t expecting, the voice of my best friend from school.
We sat there, the two of us. For a long while. No one was particularly interested in talking about Chippy, about JJ, about what had happened. My friend didn’t come bearing profound words of wisdom or comfort. “You know, guinea pigs only live, like, four to eight years maximum, so it’s not the biggest deal, bro.” There was none of that.
But as we sat there, urgently pressing the buttons of our Playstation controllers and downing slice after slice of lukewarm pizza, something happened. Just by him sitting there, something happened. The weight started to lift; the guilt and the fear and the sadness took its foot off of my neck; the dark clouds that had gathered began to dissipate; the haze gave way, improbably, to a solitary ray of sunlight.
“I’ll go.” I told my mother after my friend had left a couple hours later. “I’ll go to school tomorrow.”
This is today’s lesson, Kira: show up. Show up for the people you care about. Sometimes really bad things happen. People’s pets die. And people’s people die, too. And sometimes, in those sad and difficult moments, our tendency is to stay away. To give space. To avoid the awkwardness.
But some of the most beautiful moments in our lives lurk beneath the weight of a heavy awkwardness. And yes, sometimes people do need space, and that’s good to be aware of: but a lot of the time they don’t. They’re waiting. In agony. Alone and afraid. Wondering if they will ever be whole again. Wondering if it will be okay.
And that’s the beautiful thing, Kira. You can give them that. And without coming up with the “right” thing to say — without even uttering a word, really — you can help them be whole again. Just by showing up. Just by knocking on the door. Just by summoning the courage and the compassion to steer towards the discomfort, as opposed to yielding to the desire to turn away from it. Just by saying, with your presence alone, they they are not, in fact, alone.
Till our next lesson,
Dad
