Learning what to leave behind and what to keep
by Jilli Leonard
Military kids learn to travel light. I learned to leave behind anything I knew I would not need, or things that could easily be replaced once we got to our new destination. It is the absence of things that forces me, still, to place value on the intangible: music, relationships and education.
When our family moved to Turkey I was just learning to speak English. I was constantly learning about other cultures, primarily through the international preschool I attended. One of my best friends was a boy named Ian, the son of an Israeli ambassador. He gave me one of the most valuable of my few possessions: a little lion cub, bright orange with a fluffy patch of brown hair on the top of his head.
What you carry with you
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Simba the lion has traveled the world.
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Simba was the hero of my favorite Disney movie, The Lion King. Whenever an American family got a new VHS in the mail from the States, it was shared throughout the American embassy by families with children, and we would watch these movies several times before passing them on. We were privy to Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, as well, but nothing was quite the same as Pride Rock and the circle of life.
When I went to Ian’s house for a play date and saw the small stuffed version of my hero, I wanted to play with it. Ian had several other toys, many that were more expensive and flashy, but we continually found ways to combine Simba with our games. Towards the end of the day, Ian decided that I was much more partial to his lion than he was, and offered it to me. Of course I jubilantly accepted.
My mother came to pick me up, and was absolutely mortified. She almost raised her voice at Ian’s mother. “Jilli has plenty of her own stuffed animals. She doesn’t need any more toys, and certainly doesn’t need to steal them from other children!” But Ian’s Mom was fully aware of the generous act her son had displayed. He had not been forced to share. He was acting from a heart of generosity and selflessness. She insisted that I take Simba home for good.
Since then, Simba and I have rarely parted. On our flight from Turkey back to the United States Simba got a VIP tag, normally used to label luggage, hung around his neck by the flight attendant. He wore it for several weeks. Simba attended several “Show and Tells” in elementary school. In the second grade, the tuft of fuzzy hair on the top of his head was cropped to a short military crew cut, like my father’s. The insides of his ears were dyed a deeper shade of pink with my first makeup kit. The pink blush made him seem more life-like.
The dear lion cub has accompanied me through the darkest, deepest digs of self-discovery and personal loss. His fading orange fur caught tears after being made fun of in Texas for the bowl cut hair and pink overalls I wore on the first day of kindergarten. He was hugged tight during midnight thunderstorms when I was too petrified to get out of bed to fetch my parents. It did not matter where we moved, Simba was home. More recently, Simba has been a source of comfort in college, in broken relationships and a mechanism for security when I learned that my brother moved out of my parent’s house last week. He is barely 17.
The lion shows physical scars of love almost to the point of abuse. He is dingy, faded, spent and shabby. His plastic eyes are scratched and his fur is matted and gray in patches. But in my eyes, that lion will never be viewed as a damaged good.