I almost missed the engagement ring the kallah bear sported on her left paw.

“Lucky you,” my sister-in-law told me recently when I repeated this story. “You could’ve thrown the entire thing away.”

Not likely, because I’m a tiny bit sentimental. I held on to those bears for years, during which time various other stuffed animals joined their ranks. Some of them were gifts — beautiful bears and dogs with knitted scarves, and a penguin in a red hat. Some of them were my fault, like the Build-a-Bear additions (shudder), and a stuffed sheep I brought home from Israel for one of my boys.

I perched these stuffed animals on various shelves in my kids’ bedrooms, and on their beds. They looked cute, but in my mind, they were temporary.

Recently, I was caught up in the kind of organization associated with a Marie Kondo purge, when I decided to permanently settle the stuffed animal question. It had been some years since their stint on the bedroom shelves, and they were currently in the no-man’s-land of Top Shelf, Basement Closet.

I was testing to see if anyone missed them, and no one did, but the situation felt unresolved.

A friend of mine, whose identity must remain secret, also sought to dispose of her stuffed animals. The problem was that her kids are terribly attached to them; they play with them every Shabbos afternoon, pooling them on the floor, and swimming in them. The only reason they agreed to let her get rid of them was that she promised she’d find them a better home.

She packed them into a clear plastic garbage bag, and put the entire thing on the top shelf of a basement closet. (Great minds, etc.) One day, acting decisively, she transferred them to her garbage can. (As for her promise, well, she saved 50 of them, and some would argue the garbage is the best home for stuffed animals.)

Trash collection day found her on a collision course with disaster because she and her children were outside waiting for the bus the same time the sanitation truck tipped the can with the clear bag of animals into its maw. Thankfully, her innocent children didn’t notice.

I should’ve disposed of my animals clandestinely, in the dead of night. But I didn’t. Instead, I decided to go the route of Enlightened Mother, and made it a group activity with the children while we organized the playroom. Out went the chassan and kallah and other miscellaneous stuffed things, but the kids drew a line.

“Not beautiful ones,” said my oldest son.

“I have no use for them,” I told him.

“I’ll take them with me when I get married,” he said.

“Not the sheep from Eretz Yisrael,” said my second son.

“Are you taking this sheep into your marriage, too?” I asked him.

He guffawed. “My kids will love it,” he said.

“I hope your wife will,” I answered.

Sometimes I think that parenting is a series of delicate negotiations. Drink your milk, and you can have a doughnut. You can have a later bedtime, but you’ll need to unload the dishwasher.

As a parent, you brim with hope and optimism that these negotiations have permanence, but children show you they can be the most tenuous of agreements.

Recently, my youngest son came home from the Avos Ubanim grand finale, ecstatic, the recipient of a life-sized stuffed cheetah he named Mars. Mars wears a yarmulke with the letter Beis and sits in the corner of Boruch’s room.

As a further reminder of the fragility of my decision to settle the stuffed animal question once and for all, my boys recently gifted their new nephew with a six-foot-tall stuffed giraffe.

We all know it’s really a gift for their sister, the baby’s mother.

At least that one’s not staying at my house.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 779)