One day when Jesse was about 5, we spotted pillows that looked like animals in K-Mart, and he fell in love with this one.

One of the joys of his young life was when his pillow was washed and dried and came out plump and fluffy.

He carried that thing everywhere: to our bed or the couch if he wasn’t feeling well, to camp, on trips. Once as were were boarding a plane, one of other passengers saw this little boy carrying his big dog pillow and smiled.

It has held up better than any pillow we have ever owned. He’s had it for almost ten years.

But he is 14 now and has been in the gradual process of “putting away childish things” over the last few years. When we hosted his twelfth birthday party, we took the last of the bear pictures off his bedroom walls before the kids in his class came over. We’ve been pulling books and toys off the shelf a little at a time that are no longer receiving any attention. I believe he took a “regular” pillow to camp last year. And just recently he told me he wanted to put away his dog pillow and get a normal one.

That’s a good step, a right step, an expected step. I wouldn’t want to him to cart his dog pillow off to college or his honeymoon.

But as a parent, there is a bit of a pang as each vestige of childhood is laid aside bit by bit.

When they are little we so anticipate the next step in their development; we sometimes even devise ways to “help” them sit up or begin to walk, and we coax that first word out with great enthusiasm! But after the long days and sleep-interrupted nights of babyhood, the blossoming curiosity of toddler days, and the busy school years, it seems like their growth is a train hurtling ever more quickly to that time when they will stand on their own two feet as an adult. We know that’s the desired end result of our years of love and training, but it comes all too fast.

There is nothing we can do to stop it, and we don’t really want to hold them back. But we smile wistfully as we remember a little boy’s delight in a warm, plumped up dog pillow fresh from the dryer.