Revenge of the Pillow People

I’m able to provide my children with food, shelter, and clothing. So I consider myself lucky that the first hunger I noticed in my five-year-old son was material, not physical.

He came home the other day asking if I’d buy him a Labubu. Naturally, I had no idea what that was. (If you’re living under a rock like me, it’s an extraordinarily overpriced keychain/stuffed animal/gremlin hybrid.) He told me that all the kids had one. His friend even offered to ask his babysitter to drive them 40 minutes to Target to buy one if I wouldn’t. I refused, but every few days, he still asks.

Watching my son pine for his Labubu, I recognized that same longing.

I’m transported back to 1991, when I was about his age and had my own first taste of desperately wanting something I absolutely didn’t need. We were down in Nags Head, North Carolina, for a big family trip — my cousins, aunts, uncles, everyone under one roof.

I remember my older cousins, Laurie and Danielle, sauntering into the faux-wood-paneled TV room one afternoon — tanned, sun-bleached hair, wearing neon geometric printed bathing suits. They were a few years older than me and the very coolest people in my tiny world.

Each was clutching a braided blonde-haired Pillow Person. Now, looking back, those things were garish, borderline terrifying. But at the time, I had to have one. Nothing else would do.

I begged my mom: “Can I have one? Please? Please? I just have to have a Pillow Person.”

In her divine wisdom and deep-seated frugality, she said no. And to her credit, she held the line.

So I kept coveting those darn Pillow People. Every time I slept over at my cousins’ house, I saw those ridiculous, rosy-cheeked smiling pillows propped up on their beds, the useless stubby legs flipped out on the comforter. And even as Laurie and Danielle grew older, their Pillow People survived multiple rounds of old-toy donations, perched on window seats or arranged into artful but ironic stuffed animal piles.

I’m not sure what I thought would happen if I finally got one.

Scenes that I now recognize as brainwashing from ‘90s afterschool TV shows flicker through my mind — walking down a hallway full of lockers, backpack slung over one shoulder, elbow hugging a Pillow Person to my body, the most popular girl in my class giving me a knowing nod, now flash forward to a sleepover — me, the coolest girls in the class, surrounded by our Pillow People, everyone laughing.

Or maybe my Pillow Person would help me sort out my parents’ recent divorce. My new blonde protector, a trusted confidante, us against the world. We’d bravely navigate the very confusing new normal as the ground of my home life liquified beneath our feet in the wake of familial rupture.

Looking back, that Pillow Person was my first brush with the hungry ghost.

In Buddhism, the “hungry ghost” is a symbol of endless craving. These beings have huge, empty bellies and thin, narrow throats. So they’re endlessly hungry but never satisfied. Know anyone else like that?

Materialism is just one manifestation of this hunger. I don’t think of myself as hugely into things, though my husband and the steady stream of FedEx deliveries to our home would likely disagree. But if you’ve been here for more than a minute, you’ll know that I’ve sorta perfected this cool habit of outsourcing my happiness.

I wish I could tell you that I perched my son on my knee, gave him a hug, and then looked him in the eyes and told him, “Sweetheart, you don’t need a Labubu to belong. You’re already enough.”

But in reality, I said something like, “Dude, you’re not getting one and if I have to hear about this Labubu thing one more time, Mommy’s gonna lose her cool.”

I eventually circled back with a more Dr. Becky-approved response. But the truth is, I’m not sure that reaffirming his basic okayness will protect him against the pull of comparative mind.

I want to protect him from those first tiny roots of craving before they burrow too deep.

And yet, I know I can’t. Just like I couldn’t bubble-wrap him to protect him from breaking his arm falling off a slide.

Maybe that’s the real parent trap: we try to save our kids from the hungers that still control us (🎵 hello projection my old friend!🎵).

Isn’t craving for spiritual attainment just another flavor of craving? Just one more place where I’m swearing up and down that this time, finally, “once [fill in the blank] happens, then I’ll be happy”?

So, yeah, it seems we’re both working with our hungry ghost energies. I want him enlightened in kindergarten. And he still wants a Labubu.

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