On Pacifiers, Lessons, and Resilience

I found a baby’s pacifier

on the concrete of the cart return

at the grocery store.

*

It looked forlorn, lost,

missing the cherubic mouth

that it had once served.

*

I imagined the child,

suffering through her first

heartbreak,

*

seeking the familiar comfort.

Could she express her feelings,

use her words to tell Mama

*

how she felt?

*

Or was it just a cascade

of wails, spitting out the replacement,

expressing fear and panic the only way

*

she could?

*

All she wants is the return

to the familiar. All she wants

is to submit, once again,

*

to the safe routine

already engraved on

her nascent neural pathways.

*

She’ll learn a lesson in

resilience,

her and Mama both,

*

from this little misplaced

conglomeration of silicone

and plastic.

*

She’ll eventually break in a new binky,

like an athlete breaks in

a new mouthpiece

*

at the start of a new season.

*

And Mama will endure

this first heartbreaking episode,

and buy a clip to keep it secure.

*

The Universe has elegantly

strange ways of teaching its

lessons, don’t you think?