I wrote this post about my brother’s well-loved teddy bear in May 2005. That thing has traveled with the kid to every state he’s ever lived in and is still propped up in a corner or a closet in his house. Dude is in his 40s and not ashamed to be rocking that stuffy, which has been with him through some tough times.
If you read the comments on that post, Jon commiserates, saying he’s got just as well-snuggled a bear of his own. Nearly six months after writing that, he put that bear in a suitcase and boarded a plane from LAX to MDW to meet me in person for the first time. We needed to find out if there was anything *there* there.
He came off the plane at 1:10 am in his jeans and Mr. T Experience sweatshirt (which he still has)—I can’t remember if it already had the remnants of a sticker that had gotten through the washer and dryer or if that happened after we had been out at a concert together. Some of the details are fuzzy now. I do remember I had agonized over what to wear and finally put on what I hoped would be a flattering, “put together” outfit: black turtleneck (which is still somewhere in our closet, too) fitted/flared work trousers and high-heeled boots. It was an unseasonably warm night in early November.
Things were awkward at our first stop: The all-night Omega diner, where he ordered a Reuben sandwich and I had a bowl of chicken with wild rice soup. There was stilted smalltalk with a lot of shy silence that I rushed to fill with gibberish. He made little move to reciprocate. Where was the chatty guy I had gotten to know over a million hours on the phone? This was a REAL bummer.
I dropped him off at his hotel and went home to wallow in disappointment. In the morning I called cc in tears because I hadn’t felt even a twinge of the Zeus-strength bolt I assumed would blast between us the first time I looked into his eyes. I was crushed.
CC gave me a pep talk and I went to pick him up. Ok, so maybe no spark. Oh well, he came all the way out here. The least I could do was show him why Chicago is the best city in the world. First stop? Portillo’s for a Chicago-style hot dog.
Obviously now I clearly see what’s between us was never going to be an instantaneous, explosive chemical reaction. What in the Hallmark Channel had I expected? In the only photo I’d seen of the guy before then, he had a dozen mini doughnuts stuffed into his mouth. I had studied it and declared to Ale that, yes, he is most definitely cute, and his hair looks like it’s really soft, too. By the time he bought those tickets, I was half in the bag and just looking for confirmation that there was chemistry to back it up.
This thing started with a tiny ember and steadily picked up kindling as we spent the weekend making jokes, sharing random anecdotes and marveling at how two people who seem so very different could be aligned on so many random topics. We drove around the city, waited in line, looked out over the skyline from the top of the Sears Tower. And, like one of those long-lasting fireplace logs that sits there looking forlorn while you impatiently press it with a flame and pray it catches, a pleasant glow verrrrrry sllllloooooowly started somewhere out of sight and began to take over. By the end of the weekend, it felt like this slow burn might be strong enough to last for much longer than we ever expected. Jon became my H, even though none of you had any idea it was happening at the time.
When I went to drop him off at his room, I caught sight of a small, beige, stubby, nubbly sort of thing. There is a very specific texture a once-fuzzy and floofy stuffed animal takes on after decades of being squeezed and slept on: His bear. I’d recognize something so beloved anywhere. It was surprising he’d let me see it the first time we met, but I had a feeling he’d known I would understand.
We’ve been together almost two decades since then. Now we live down the road from that Portillo’s I first took him to, but these days he orders a cheeseburger, no lettuce and cheese fries. And we’re not terribly far from the Omega diner (now under new management and certainly no longer open all night, but I’m guessing the menu hasn’t changed very much).
The bear, Ted, is safe in this house somewhere, and not getting many snuggles, the poor neglected thing. These days there’s no space for him. Two rambunctious littles who inherited their father’s very soft hair compete for space in H’s arms instead. And when I’m lucky I can find a safe space in them, too.
#NaBlPoMo
“My Life” Billy Joel
