RIP, Minty Bear.
July 9, 2007We have returned from Montauk, full of sandy, lobster-rolly memories, but missing a beloved member of our family: Minty Bear.
Henry and Minty Bear.
I bought Minty Bear--so named for her pastel-green hue—when I was five months pregnant. When I didn't yet understand that when you have a baby, the world dumps truckloads of stuffed animals over your head. When I couldn't have predicted that within months we would be cramming animals into industrial-sized plastic bags and hauling them to the Salvation Army, where they would join their bereft, plushy brethren.
Anyway, when Henry was an infant we kept Minty Bear in his crib, because it didn't have any pull-out eyes or pop-'em-off buttons or related chokeables. He liked it fine, but then again he was also smitten with the ceiling fan, and would spend hours chuckling at it. There you go again, ceiling fan. Whirling and whirling. Oh, ceiling fan, you are a minx. But as the months passed he developed a decided preference for Minty over the ten or so stuffed animals that we had room for. Sure, he had the occasional fling with Black Bear or Teensy the Elephant. There was that weird jag with Tup Tup, the hard-bodied, scratchy-furred Siamese Cat Steiff. But in the end, he always came back to Minty.
The Minty/Henry bond was only strengthened over the years. Every night, he gathered Minty Bear in his arms and hunkered down on top of her. Every morning, he dragged her out of bed and downstairs to join him in buildng his mighty Lego Army, occasionally stopping to kiss her ears and murmur her name. He enjoyed discussing her positive attributes: her softness, her excellent smell. (A smell built up from countless nights of either drooling or peeing on her—or, hell, both--which no amount of washing could totally expunge.) She was his baby. His words.
The night we returned from Montauk, Scott asked me, as he does most nights, where Minty Bear had gone to. Henry made do that night with Black Bear while the two of us searched. And searched and searched. And I realized that at the hotel, I had failed to execute a final under-the-bed search before we left, although I had checked every other nook and cranny of the room. I called the hotel. The woman who answered the phone promised to call if it was found, but when I offered to give her a description, she just said, "It's a bear. Got it," and hung up. I didn't hold out much hope.
The next morning we told Henry that Minty Bear was probably gone for good. He asked me to call the hotel again, which I did. No luck. He nodded and said, "Okay, next we need to call the police." I tried to explain that typically the police weren't called in such matters. That's when his lower lip started trembling. "You mean I'll never see her again? Not even when I die?"
It went on like that for a while. He wept for her and also recited poetry on the spot about Minty Bear "going to sea" while his heart "blew up." He had us both in tears by the end when he sang a song called "Bye Minty/Bye Henry," in which both bear and boy bid each other adieu, forever and ever. (He sang both parts.)
Then he asked me to call the hotel again.
He seemed to recover after that, although he had moments—moments in which he demanded that I look at him as his eyes spilled big fat teardrops and he whispered "I'll never see Minty again." My own heart was blowing up. I called the hotel a few more times. They didn't ask me not to call again, but they thought it.
Then, yesterday, we found another Minty Bear. We were at a toy store, finding a present for another child, a child whose parents have probably never misplaced that child's best friend and soulmate, when I spied Minty Bear II on a shelf. I picked it up. I wasn't sure if this was a good move.
"Henry?" I said, and showed it to him. He looked it over, gave it a hug."It doesn't feel right," he said. "It feels too fat." He looked at it some more. "No, it's good. I think we should take it."
But on the way home he wept more for Minty Bear, and I doubted the wisdom of the purchase. "Oh Minty," he keened. "Gone forever."
"Maybe we should tell this Minty Bear about the other one, so she knows how special she was to you."
Nothing from the backseat. Then: "You go first."
So I told Minty Bear II all about Minty Bear I. How I had found her in a store when Henry wasn't born yet, and I knew she was meant to be his bear. How much Henry loved her. How he loved to smell her ears, which smelled like stale little-boy pee (I didn't say that part). And how she was his baby.
Then I kept going. I said that Minty Bear loved Henry so much that she told all her relatives about him, about this great deal she had with this amazing little boy. And her relatives were jealous. Why do you get all that love when we're stuck in this toy store? they wondered. So she cut a deal with one of her cousins, a bear who happened to be waiting for a boy of his own in New Jersey, of all places. I've had plenty of good years, she told her cousin, so I'll take off and maybe, just maybe, they'll find you. And that's just what happened. And in this way Henry made two bears very, very happy.
He was suspiciously quiet. Was he sleeping? I pulled up to the house and turned around. He was staring at the bear. He looked at me. "We did a good thing," he said. He kissed the new Minty Bear's ears, and closed his eyes.
Reader Comments (199)
We may have taken a plane down, but we never managed to find the dog, who was named Menonee for reasons known only to my nephew.
I saw this tip in a magazine long ago before I had kids, and, due to my own childhood trauma it stuck with me. It was to get an id tag, the kind you put on pets, and attach it to a collar or ribbon to put around the loved plush toy's neck (or similar appendage). Perhaps someday we will be able to microchip them too.
xoxo
we posted your story on our blogwww.plushteam.comwe are a group of plush/doll makers and sometimes need to be reminded of why we make what we do. Thanks for the story!
pnut has two versions of her blankie *just in case* and lord if i am not going on ebay to find a spare kitty right now. kitty rarely leaves the house i am so scared to lose it- hunting for the thing tossed out of the stroller gives me a case of flopsweat worse than losing my retainer in the 6th grade. yeesh. i still have my chicky, only by the grace of god and what must have been my mom's eagle eye.
you tell henry we'll bring kitty and make a special trip out east and find minty I, damnit!!
We have 5 (yes 5) bungees. little bear heads with blankee's for the body. He's in LOVE with these and I feared that if we had only one and it had met the fate of minty bear we'd be hosed.
We have a replacement, just in case, but they are worlds apart.
I'm glad you found a "new" Minty. It's the little things that stay with you as a parent, you know?
Yak
http://www.salon.com/june97/mothers/daniel970625.html
Daughter has a very beloved lime green kitty named "key lime". Last summer key lime was run over by the stroller in the reddest mud ever. I was worried she'd never wash. Thankfully, she did, but I decided then that I needed a backup. I worked the backup into rotation and after awhile we had two nearly identical key limes. My plan worked well for almost a year. Until daughter saw the other. Now she has to have both all the time. And since she can't say "other" but says "yellow", it's name is "lemon meringue".
Long live Minty II
When I was pregnant with my son I used to have terrible terrbile dreams were I ended up leaving him somewhere because of the trauma of it. Some things you just never get over. I've looked high and low for a replacement Beth Anne but to no avail.....Ebay, swapmeets return zippo.