Blue Bear

What I don’t know is how it got there. A child’s lovey – in this case a blue bear – frozen to the grass along the shore. The home next door to us has been abandoned. The yard is littered with empty cans from energy drinks, a large square box labeled Christmas ornaments, and other household detritus. On the shore, a wooden kayak is splitting at the seams, and a weightlifting station stands like a sentinel under a tattered and wind-whipped canopy that waves its white nylon tarp like a flag of surrender. But it is the bear that guts me. Once, I knew the boy to whom it belonged. I knew his mother, too. And his sister. One by one they left. The boy, now a young man, and eventually the father.

There is no mother here now to gather up the precious memories. Not the quintessential pinecone ornament or Plaster of Paris handprint sprinkled with red and green glitter. Certainly not Blue Bear who was abandoned in the weeds and has since frozen to the ground like a memory that refuses to fade. Blue Bear eyes me in desperation.

“Don’t leave me.” Or maybe his tone is more accusatory. “Why didn’t you help?”

I take solace from another Blue Bear. One gifted to my son by a dear friend the day he was born. This Blue Bear has a wind-up music box in his belly that plays (what else?) Brahm’s Lullaby. Face smooshed in from a baby/toddler/boy sleeping on top of him. Loved. So loved that his nose is worn off. So loved that he went from crib to bed to cedar chest, the repository of sacred artifacts.

The Cedar Chest is a museum of loved things. A candle burnt on a memorable night. Glitter-encrusted pajama bottoms from daughter’s high school homecoming game. A manuscript draft from an old lover. Graduation photos. Old journals that tell the history of my family. A family different than the one next door, but broken, nonetheless.

When my son had a son, I rooted to the bottom of the Cedar Chest and pulled out Blue Bear, nose still smushed, and smelling faintly of cedar. Blue Bear has a new family of stuffies now — Daniel the tiger, Marcel the octopus, Kevin the flying squirrel. Never abandoned. Always loved. Saved by a mother who hoped for a better future … that eventually arrived.