Bluey Broke My Preschooler’s Heart

And then it healed mine.

I’d heard tale that the final new episode of Bluey, which debuted last week, was a whopping thirty minutes long and liable to make a mother cry her eyes out. Over what, I had no idea, but since the last three years of watching this beautiful, tender children’s show has brought many a tear to my eyes already, I didn’t doubt the claim.

(Spoilers ahead!)

Later, Theo and I settled in to watch “The Bluey movie” (as he calls it) in our new living room, empty boxes from our recent move stacked almost to the ceiling. We had skipped every new episode to watch this one, so we hadn’t yet witnessed the foreshadowing of events to come. I had no idea how relevant this final episode would be to our family, so while I was well prepared for my own tears to fall at some point, I was not prepared for my son’s to follow suit.

In Episode 49, titled “The Sign,” Bluey, Bingo, Chilli, and Bandit—the beloved family of Blue Heeler dogs—are preparing to host their friends’ wedding, a final hurrah in the home they are about to sell. Chilli and Bandit debate the wisdom of their move for Bandit’s new job, while the bride, Frisky, rails at her groom for also trying to move them away from their loved ones. What-ifs abound for both families, and Bluey seeks wisdom from her teacher about whether or not they’ll all be okay.

“We’ll see,” is her storied reply.

Later, the bride leaves in an angry huff, setting off a wild goose (English Cocker Spaniel?) chase for Chilli and the little ones as Bandit and friends continue setting up for the ceremony. Chilli wants to save the wedding, but Bluey is desperate to find Frisky for another reason. Before her angry departure, Frisky had requested the For Sale sign be removed from the yard in time for the ceremony, leaving Bluey to believe that if the sign is gone then they won’t have to move after all. It’s the sort of tender hope this show excels at, the childlike faith that simple things can, and will, change the course of the future for the better.

There’s a moment near the end, after Frisky has been found, when a tearful Chilli admits to Bluey that she doesn’t want to move, either, but that she has to believe it will be good for their family, despite all of the unknowns.

“We’ll see,” she says to her daughter, who brightens with hope at the familiar phrase.

“We’ll see!” Bluey exclaims, tail wagging.

After the joy of the wedding, all fun dance moves and bright lights, Frisky and her husband decide to stay in town. In contrast, we later watch as Bandit, Chilli, Bluey, and Bingo all sit in separate rooms of their now empty house. They’re solemn and resolved. There is acceptance of their fate, but no real excitement. As they shuffle into the car to leave, Bandit gets a phone call from the realtor. A heart wrenching song swells over the moment as he pauses, then turns to the sign now covered by a “Sold” banner, and rips it from the ground, tossing it into the road with labored breaths. The family watches from the car with wide, disbelieving eyes, and then they run and tackle him to the ground, shaking with tears of joy.

The buyers found another house. They get to stay there forever.

Next to me, our four-year-old son, Theo, watched this episode with a trembling chin and tears on his cheeks. He was silent for the final minutes of the show, riveted by the music and emotion of the characters, and I watched his eyes follow them as if he were searching for his own rescue from the unfamiliar territory of this strange, new home. When it was over, he looked up at me, swiped a sleeve across his snotty nose, and asked, “Mom, if we tear out our sign can we go back to our old house?”

This friggin’ show.

Like Chilli, I had wrestled with my own mixed feelings about our move. For someone hardwired to see setbacks as evidence of wrong turns, the ups and downs of our sale were enough to make me want to cancel the whole damn thing. With every confirmation came another delay. With every answer came another question. Even at the end, when it was clear that God had sent us in this direction, my obsessive mind sought justification for my doubts. When Chilli looked at Bluey and sighed, “We’ll see,” I felt her uncertainty and fear in my bones. For the adults in this episode, quiet acceptance of life’s twists and turns is the order of the day.

But for Bluey, who at six years old cannot grasp the breadth of challenges they might face in a new city, “We’ll see” becomes a rally cry. It’s not a sigh of resignation; it’s a celebration of opportunities to come.

I looked at my sweet boy, whose tender heart rivals that of his mother, and answered his question as best I could. “No, honey. We already moved. This is our home now, and we’re going to make as many happy memories here as we did there.”

“But I want to go back,” he cried.

I had to admit I felt the same way. In that moment—with my husband out of town, my OCD on high alert, and endless emails, phone calls, and paperwork to complete—any excitement about our new home had been quickly smothered. I felt unmoored, adrift in a mystifying sea of my own creation. Had we made the wrong decision? How would this place ever feel as safe and as warm as our old house? With its navy paint so dark it’s almost black, the house appeared to loom over me like a specter every time I pulled in the driveway. Where were the pretty shrubs and flowers? Where was the porch swing? The stately white columns? Why had we left all of that bright, happy sunshine behind?

With a deep breath, I replied, “Sometimes I do, too. And it’s okay to miss our old house. It was a good place.”

“Is this a good place?” Theo asked. My chest ached at the hope in his words.

I cannot offer Theo the guarantee I so long to give. I cannot even offer it to myself. There is no going back; not only because it would be a legal near-impossibility, but because acceptance of the here and now is the only way to experience the goodness we seek. Without that acceptance, we’ll remain stuck in the myriad of other choices we could have made, but didn’t.

That’s no way to live a life, and it’s no way to build a home.

So we wake up each day and thank God for all the beauty that surrounds us. We drink coffee on the huge front porch and hang curtains on the windows and invite our friends to visit. We marvel at how quickly we can get from this house to anywhere in town and we laugh at how much we actually like the suburbs. (“How’d that taste coming out of your mouth?” “Like vinegar.”) It’s all a bit surreal. We thought we were done moving forever, and then we made an about face to a town where neither of us had ever lived before. But there are pieces of us here, in our friends’ memories and my mother’s teenage years and that stretch of road with one of my favorite words on it.

Pretty soon, I bet this house will feel like home.

“We’ll see,” I say to my son.

It’s my rally cry, too.

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