Take Care of Her

Over the last several weeks, all of Helena Iara's toys have become mothers and daughters.  The little mouse is the daughter of the big mouse, who is in turn the daughter of the little cat, who is daughter of the big cat, who is daughter of Pato the duck...  In each of these cases, size is much more important than race or appearance.  Natural "enemies" like cats and mice can be mothers and daughters to each other.

Over the last couple of days, she has made it very clear why and how this parenting relationship develops: they take care of each other.  Today, as I held her frog puppet and had it sing songs to her, she put first the little moose (called "Mimoosinho") and then the larger mouse ("Mimoosão") between the frog's long arms and said "Care for her" (cuida dela!).  At that point, she made the relationship clear: "This is their mother."

One of the great philosophical debates of all time is what kind of emotions lie at the base of what it means to be human.  According to Heraclitus, "all things come about through strife". (war, conflict... it's hard to translate the greek polemos).  In the Gospel of John, we see that all comes about through "the word" (logos, sometimes better understood as reason, thought that's probably not what John meant).  I wonder if Helena isn't taking up with another school of philosophical thought, where care lies at the foundation of all things.

Heidegger was famous for putting Sorge (care) at the center of Dasein (being-there), but I think Helena is pointing at something different: for Heidegger, this care was associated with worry and anxiety (he was, after all an influence on loads of pessimistic existentialists later in the 20th century).  Heidegger did see care as the idea that things or people are important, that they matter to us (in Spanish, for instance, one of the ways you can say "I care about x" is "x me importa", it matters to me.).  People are different from animals because we feel this kind of care and concern in discerning what is important.  For Helena's stuffed animals, care for the next smallest member of the group is the way they come to be "her" toys.

Donald Winnicott may actually be the best resource here: he talks about the "holding space" that babies and small children need to feel loved and supported.  For him, like for Helena, "caring for" is not an intellectual exercise (like Heidegger's existential worry), but a physical act: a hug.  When each of her toys "cares for" the next, it holds the next smallest baby: the frog embraces the cat, who embraces the little moose.

A little game, but philosophically profound: and I think it says that Rita and I are doing a pretty good job at showing Helena we love her.  So that she can show others (even her imaginary friends) down on the line.