“You know, you’re lucky. They used to burn stuffed animals when kids got sick,” I said, pulling my older son’s stuffed rabbit out of the washing machine. “You just had to go through the laundry.” Despite that, I still felt bad for the poor, bedraggled thing.

While my older son is not as into his stuffed animals now as when I said that, stuffies are the great love of my younger son’s life. Every vacation souvenir, every holiday, every trip to the zoo (purchased with his allowance) involves stuffed animals. He has a giant pile on his bed and a stuffed animal hammock that holds many more.

He doesn’t have names for quite all of them – there are several that made their way from my parents’ house or my older son’s collection that remain mostly unnamed – but most of them have monikers and personalities to match. A number of them also have ages and even jobs – one is a teacher while another is a science writer (like me).

Nor are they limited to regular animals. We have a giant unicorn, a 6 foot rattlesnake, a kitten monster, a bunch of dragons, so many elephants, a wooly mammoth, a buffalo, a giant Bowser shell from Mario Bros, and much more.

As someone who was once an imaginative kid and is now an imaginative adult, I imagine them. I imagine their personalities with him, when he and I play with them together. I even talk to them sometimes, as I did that day doing laundry. I tell them to take care of my kiddo, to help him feel safe, to be there in the middle of the night as he sleeps. I was never into my stuffed animals as a kid like he was, so they give me a chance to revisit a part of my childhood in a new way. Not that I’m living through him, so much as it’s another avenue to explore. Another way of experiencing the world.

I know I’m not the only parent who feels this way, having a special connection to the toys that are so precious to their kid. There’s a storyline in Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin leaves Hobbes in the woods and his parents go searching for Hobbes in the middle of the night. The mom starts yelling “Hobbes! Hobbes!” The dad just looks at her, raising his eyebrow, and she shrugs. While my kid has never left a stuffed animal in the woods, I’d totally call to it. There’s a reason the Toy Story movies resonate with so many people.

Sometimes, I wonder what will come of all of these stuffies.

I remember my own stuffed animals. There was that pink bunny – what was her name? There was an orange beaver with a rattle in his tail – I think it was Bobby? My parents have a few of them, but I have no idea where the rest are.

I think of the story of the Velveteen Rabbit, which I couldn’t get through reading to my kids without sobbing through the end. Even if they don’t get burned out in the back alley because of the aforementioned scarlet fever, they’re not going to be with my kid forever. The days I think about that, I hug them – and my younger son – a little harder.

I know in physical form, they’re “just” stuffing and fabric. Yet there’s a magic to them, a love that animates these inanimate objects. They become real in some way, real in the same way our favorite fictional characters in books and movies are, the way that my Dungeons and Dragons characters are that I’ve spent so many hours role playing.

But it’s even more than that. My husband said the power of siblings is that they are people who you share your childhood with. Obviously, toys will never be the same as siblings. Instead, they’re treasured in their own way. They’re the keeper of stories and flights of fancy. They’re friends who will listen no matter what. For kids who spend a lot of time in their own heads, they’re imagination made real. And I’m so glad that my kid – and me – can share his childhood with such wonderful creatures.