Bear 

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When I find something that is so memory filled, and full of years passed by, I hold it like it could fall apart in my hands. A book we read together as kids wrapped in blankets on the couch who's pages hold on dearly to the cardboard spine, the green knit blanket she wore to a thin web of fabric from wear and tear and love and Bear. I hold it carefully so that my fingers only loosely hold her pastel colored teddy bear’s round torso and stubby limbs. Bear’s yellowing fur face used to be white and adorned with black glass eyes and a pink nose. I allow my mind to recover memories of childhood. I can’t differentiate from a story told to me accompanied by wilting photographs from something I actually retained and saw through my own eyes. Every ruffle of his fur by a finger, each swipe of softness on my hand, makes my mind spin into a moment from what feels like forever ago and they’re so fragile- fleeting even. Sometimes I’ll catch a glimpse that flickers across that space that lives behind my eyes, but it fades almost immediately like the forceful flash of a camera that lingers after a photo is taken.

This idea fascinates me- the wonder of your childhood memories, or memories in general. Are they truly yours? Something that your eyes and brain took a snapshot of and actually held onto from years ago? Or are they bits and pieces of things you’ve seen that you’ve pieced together to become a memory. Is a created memory less real than one that actually happened? Does it matter?

I can feel tenseness disappear from my body when I pick up these fragile snippets of the past and I somehow feel weaker, vulnerable, like after a lover blindsides you with a hard right hook to the heart you were completely unprepared for. You feel yourself turn inward and soften as opposed to the strong posture and outward strength people associate with you. It’s hard to explain but it’s a feeling I’m familiar with. It’s like right before you fall asleep and your muscles finally relax but you’re wide awake and consumed with feeling. Maybe that’s how babies feel when they’re born. Maybe that’s how mothers feel when they give birth to their child after the trauma of pushing a being through their body. I’d imagine it’s how a parent feels when they hold their baby for the first time in their arms. I’d be afraid I’d drop my baby—it’s like your muscles turn to heavier versions of themselves and the voluntary motion to keep them up is gone. They just don’t have the strength to stay up.

Sometimes I think about what is left of us- not in a religious way deciding whether or not I want to be dead and waste away in a box someplace, or if I prefer to be burned to powder and spread across a certain area, but what is my legacy? What will I be leaving behind?

Her and I have a hit or miss relationships. She hates me or loves me and usually it’s hate with an undercurrent of love that always pulls me under. I drown blissfully in the moment until my head breaks through the surface to get pummeled by another wave of anger, but lately we’ve been doing well. Storm free. Or perhaps the perfect storm? Regardless it’s the best its been in years. The best its been since when she had this bear that she discovered in the abyss of stored things she keeps crammed in a clear ‘underbed’ storage container in her studio apartment in Chicago.