On Lying and Leprechauns

A caveat: If the following incident had occurred on a different week, it very likely would not have been a big deal. But for various reasons, this was a Difficult Week.* Strange behavior issues with the five-and-a-half-year-old led to insecurities in the parenting department. If you’re a parent, I’m certain you’ve had one of those days (months?) where you ask yourself, “Who the hell is in charge here?!” And then you realize, with some discomfort, that it is you. This was one of those days.

Let’s start here: A few days ago was St. Patrick’s Day. In my house, this usually means that we dig through drawers and closets to find mismatched green items, and then we wear whatever we find. Fun, right? Well, apparently, in other houses, leprechaun traps are set out the night before. And, although actual leprechauns are rarely, if ever, actually caught, those cute little guys leave behind treats, gifts, and notes! Sometimes, a little shred of green clothing or even a tiny leprechaun hat is found at the scene! I even heard that if you leave a potato under your pillow, the leprechauns will take the potato and leave you money.

Not knowing any of this, we sent our poor child off to school with nothing to show for herself but a green t-shirt. And it gets even worse. But can I first say to the parents of the world: Can we please get our shit together and be on the same page with this stuff?! Between that damn “elf on the shelf” at Christmastime and now this, I feel like we need some kind of holiday manual. So, tell me: Is there anything I need to know about Flag Day?  (Also, please insert rant about “getting back to the real meaning of holidays blah blah commercialization blah does every holiday have to be about treats and presents blah blah” here.)

So, having spent the whole St. Patrick’s Day at school hearing about all her friends’ leprechaun traps, my kid decided to build her own leprechaun trap that night. She was undeterred by my comment that “I think we were supposed to do this last night. I don’t think they come out again until next year.” Trap set, she went to bed — and I went to CVS, to buy…anything green, and preferably something on sale since it was 8pm and St. Patrick’s Day was basically over (unless of course you were at a bar, where it was just getting started).

The next morning, March 18th, I was hoping she’d go off to school without remembering the trap and we could put this behind us for a year. Of course, she walked in the dining room and, after a long pause, I heard, “Mum! There was a leprechaun in here!” She sounded so excited. I felt uneasy, still not comfortable with this whole situation.

“Look! He left me a note! It says, ‘Maybe next year you’ll catch me!’ And he left me some stickers!” I couldn’t even deal. My husband went in to do the “Wow!”s.

About ten minutes later, when she and I were alone, she dropped the bomb: “Mum? Was there really a leprechaun here, or did you leave that stuff in there?”

Shit.

“Mum?”

I had only two sips of coffee in me, definitely not enough to be facing a Parental Moment. “Well, what do you think?”

“I don’t know, that’s why I want you to tell me. Did you leave the stuff?”

Very quickly, I thought, “Okay, we’re talking about leprechauns; they are way low in the Pretend Holiday Characters food chain. This is not a big deal!” I decided to tell my daughter the truth. The truth! That is (almost) always the right thing to tell someone, right?

“Yes. I left the stuff. I’m not sure leprechauns are real, but I wanted you to have some fun St. Patrick’s Day treats anyway.”

“Oh.” She paused, as all the fun and excitement from a few minutes prior exited the room. “How did you write so messy?”

“I used my left hand.”

“Oh.” Even longer pause. “Leprechauns ARE real, though. Maybe I will catch one next year.”

“Are you sure they’re real?”

“Yes.”

And that’s when I knew I had made the wrong decision. I should have lied. Why? Because she wants to believe. The kid had a rough year, and she wants to believe that a tiny man wearing a tiny green hat snuck into her house and left her a present.

And, really — of all the reasons that adults are in therapy to work through childhood issues, have you ever heard ANYONE say that they are mad at their parents for letting them believe, when they were five years old, in leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy, or even Santa Claus? Do any of you harbor anger towards your parents for having lied, at some point, to keep you believing? (If they told you when you were 27 that Santa was real, I am with you: Not cool.)

I saw my daughter later that day in her classroom, too, when I went in to volunteer. She had her four-leafed clover stickers and she was giving one to a friend. She came over to say hello and I bent down to whisper in her ear.

“Are you mad at me about the leprechaun stuff?” I asked.

“No.”

“If you want, we can pretend that there was a leprechaun,” I said.

She smiled. I smiled. But mine was a sad smile. I don’t know what made her even think to question the magic on that particular day — I had carefully removed price tags and buried the CVS bag in the trash — but I’m glad that, despite my efforts to the contrary, she decided to still believe in leprechauns. I wish we could go back in time. I would say, “What?! No! I wasn’t even in that room!” and she would go to school with her own tale of the leprechaun that got away.

And now, I can only hope that I haven’t opened the door for Santa’s untimely demise.

* In light of the horrific events in Japan this week, calling my week “difficult” gave me pause. You will have to trust me when I say that it is not just this leprechaun nonsense that messed up my head; there were other issues and, in fact, they were all framed by this almost-impossible-to-grasp situation in Japan, which caused serious turmoil in the brain and a heaviness in the heart.

Also, stupid Daylight Savings didn’t help.

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