For My Boy

This story begins before you were born. It starts in a temporary-looking toy shop set up in a mall at Christmas time. I aimlessly entered the store, pushing your tiny older sister in a stroller, and stopped at a display of stuffed animals near the entrance. Into my hands fell a floppy light-brown bear in fuzzy pink bunny pajamas. This bear was so deliciously soft and plump I couldn’t put it down. I thought it would be a perfect first Christmas gift for your sister. Maybe she’d become attached and cling to it all through her childhood. So I bought it.

 

But your sister never really took to the bear. She chewed on it a bit, but it mainly sat unnoticed in her crib and then later on a shelf, surrounded by other toys, not really special to anyone.

Until you came along, my boy with a heart that exceeded your size.

One day you toddled into the room as I rearranged your sister’s stuffed animals. You picked up the round little bear and rubbed your dimpled hands across its plushy fur. You squeezed the bear’s squishy midsection, rubbed its face against your own.

“Bear,” you said. And that was that. Bear was named and claimed.

Starting right then, Bear was your steadfast companion. You discarded his pink pajamas and took him wherever you went, one hand pressing him to your body and the other holding his arm, rubbing the soft fabric back and forth between thumb and fingers. You would swing Bear by the leg as you bounced from room to room. The two of you liked to gang up on your sister, Bear flailing wildly as you hurled him through the air toward her unsuspecting head.

I’d often find you sitting still, staring into nowhere as you rubbed Bear’s sturdy, scratchy tag lightly across your lips. Always at night Bear would be in your bed, smashed under the heft of sleeping boy, smothered in your folded arms, slung across your sweaty, sweet-smelling neck. He took it all in stride, Bear did. He never stopped smiling as you lavished your rough and tumble love all over him.

         

And the places Bear went! He got to travel by U.S. postal service after he hid under a couch at Grandma’s house in Idaho while we drove away. He rode home on the back seat of your uncle’s car when he’d stayed too long at a family Christmas party. He spent time in various lost and founds and grocery store customer service desks, wrinkling a few employees’ noses when he was overdue for his next bath in the washing machine. One winter we thought we had lost him for good when he didn’t turn up for over two weeks. But happiness reigned when a melty day came and we walked outside to find your dripping Bear, sprawling and smiling on a patch of soggy brown grass.

On a day when your little sister was two and you were five, you were struck with the solemn realization that you had grown up.

“I think I should give Bear to the baby now,” you announced. “I’m too big for bears.”

“Are you sure?” I asked. “He can belong to you for as long as you want.” But you slowly handed Bear to your sister, who dropped him to the floor and ran off.

“She doesn’t seem interested,” I said. “I guess you’d better keep him so he doesn’t feel bad.” Pure relief smiled up at me and Bear was back in your arms.

As your limbs grew longer, Bear seemed to diminish. The stuffing in his belly somehow disappeared, leaving him twisted and gaunt. He underwent stitches once after a mishap with scissors, and then again when his seams just wouldn’t hold. You started school and Bear didn’t go so many places. He preferred to hold your spot on the bed, where night after night you would visibly relax as you buried your nose in his darkening, not-so-soft fur.

Then came the day late last year when we left on our first family trip to California. By now Bear looked a bit like a musty old handkerchief with a head, but still you tossed him into your duffle bag and toted him out to the car. Of course Bear was coming along.

I’m sure he was with us when we started our five-night stay in the hotel next to Disneyland. I have a mental picture of his crumpled little form lying on the white sheets of the bottom bunk as you bounced around on top. But somewhere in the chaos of three days at the Magic Kingdom and five people and their belongings in a too-small suite, Bear slipped away. I vaguely noticed he was missing as we packed our things to leave. I told myself he was probably in the minivan. He wasn’t.

The next night at our hotel in Nevada, Bear’s absence became clear. I called the California hotel. Nothing. I called again every day for two weeks, describing Bear, asking them to check the laundry, sure he’d been carried off unknowingly during one of the bedding changes. This time no Bear was ever waiting in the lost and found.

“I think he’s really gone,” you said. He was.

For nights and nights I would sit on your bed and murmur, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” while hot tears spilled on my lap. And then you’d sleep, and time would pass, and you were fine. You stopped mentioning Bear every bedtime. But still, months later when I walked into your room and saw you staring at the ceiling, I asked what you were thinking about and your mouth started to twitch. You turned, buried your face in your pillow. “Bear,” came your sad, smothered voice. There was nothing I could say.

You grew on. Had a birthday filled with Legos and sharks and goofball friends. Started cub scouts. Finished second grade spectacularly. Won soccer games and learned to swing a golf club and got braver at swimming and better at Minecraft and still you missed your Bear.

Then yesterday, eight months after our California vacation, you asked if stores still sold bears like Bear. I didn’t think so, but we googled “TY bear pink bunny suit” just to see. Our search led us straight to eBay, and suddenly a familiar brown face gazed back at us. You gasped. We stared.

After a moment, a whisper. “Mom, if I had that bear, I would love him with almost my whole heart. But not all the way, because he isn’t Bear.”

“Yes,” I said, “you know he wouldn’t be the same. He looks a little different”—a lot better is what I didn’t say—“and he wouldn’t smell like Bear.”

“I know, but I could still hug him. I could hold him and remember.”

Yes, you could. You can. And so—click, click—I ordered that bear. You have already named him Wilson. He’ll be in our mailbox on Monday.

This bear will not be what you’re yearning for. He never can be. But I hope you can always hold him and remember, you tall earnest boy with a grin full of grown-up teeth and a still-golden heart and clear eyes that reach right down to reveal the tender middle of you. I hope you’ll always stay that boy who is not afraid to love a bear, that boy who already knows, even now at your beginning, that remembering is worth every bit of the sadness that comes with it.