VITA [2021 UPDATES]

The Bear Who Wanted To See The World

I remember when he started to speak. One day I woke up and my school bag was scattered across the room, all my textbooks open and my homework spread out.

And there sat an old teddy bear I had never played with before. I remember getting him from an aunt or something, who had run into a thrift shoppe and grabbed a quick gift. He was one of those bears that you sort of forget about, but they always stay around.

He was moving and talking. "Is all this really true?" "Can water really change like that?" "Planets really move around and around and around the sun?" "The sun is a star?"

I didn't question what was obviously real, I was seeing this bear move and speak with my own two eyes. Instead of being taken aback, I crawled out of bed and sat criss-cross-apple-sauce in front of him.

And I spent my Sunday morning teaching him about the water cycle and the solar system. From then on, he was my best friend, and I was his.

"She doesn't have any friends at all!"

"It's fine, darling."

"Is our daughter a freak?"

"No, she's perfect like you. She's just smart and mature for her age, she has an old soul. And most children don't understand that."

"She's eight and never plays with her toys."

"Like I said, old soul."

Conversations like this would occur a lot between my mother and father. The bear and I would listen to them through the vent, and he would give me nervous looks, but I would just sit there silently like a good girl.

The bear adored maps and geography.

And as a child who had never asked for much in her life, my parents were thrilled to give me a map and a globe and an old fashioned compass. They were just happy I was interested in something, and was finally starting to carry around an obscure teddy bear like a normal eight year old.

The bear was the only one who even looked at the maps. I didn't bother, I wasn't interested.

I loved to see his tiny glass eyes light up as he spun the globe, faster and faster, stopping it somewhere with his furry little paw, exclaiming, "Zanzibar? Let's go there!" "Let's go to Eurasia!" "What's a 'Pacific?' "

He would turn around and around in circles, stumbling over his stout bean-filled feet, watching the compass flip every which way. I taught him about the poles and how the magnetic field worked, and later my parents graciously bought me all the magnets I wanted.

He had me circle all the places on the map he wanted to go and see in a fat red Expo marker. It was no use, I couldn't teach him to write. He couldn't hold a writing utensil. I was relieved afterwards to note that he hardly had an interest in creating art. It would've broken my heart if he couldn't follow one of his many passions.

But he wanted to view art. He wanted to go to France and see the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. He wanted to see The Birth of Venus and everything else by Sandro Botticelli, and he wanted to see the marble statues of Rome and the Leaning Tower of Pisa.

And I promised him that I would take him everywhere when I grew up, and I swore that he would get to walk across the whole Great Wall of China and bathe in the sacred wells of Scotland and eat fine German chocolate and pay respects to the Tibetan monks in the Himalayas. I promised him all this with all my heart. I promised him, my one and only very first ever friend, without knowing what was coming.

I didn't know the blackness of the hearts of other children.

I didn't know they would laugh at him when I carried him upon my shoulders one sweltering Tuesday. I didn't know they would throw rocks and sand that clouded my vision and tasted like the world compacted into tiny fragments. I could've sworn I caught a glimpse of Moscow within a grain of silicon or quartz. I didn't know they would crouch like Brazilian jaguars, ready to pounce their prey with their tiny jagged teeth and their sticky red and blue claws. I had no idea of the ferocity of their hyena-like cackles, hideous screeching echoing across the playground and causing the green jungle of plastic play sets to rumble and shake. 

And they tore him.

And I could do nothing but scream and cry and beg and suffer and watch my one and only very first ever friend die at the hands of children who had no ambitions and no idea of where they wanted to go. His soft brown fur turned hard and stiff with the saliva dripping from their hazardous throats, the beans in his hands and feet scattered across the pavement, some of his body fluff rolling away in the breeze. The glass eyes that wanted to see the people and the sights and the world, the windows to his delicate and immaculate soul, lay shattered and scraped on the cold, dirty ground, the ground he wished to someday walk upon. 

Once the earthly daemons had their fun and filled their appetites with my pain and the loss of a precious life, they danced away, ringing around the rosie, prancing like deer to busy themselves with something trivial. 

I gathered up as much of him as I could find. I made sure to pick up every single strand of the soft plastic fuzz that made up his insides and his kind and loving heart, every single bean meant to carry him around the world, every piece of fur torn from his harmless body, and tried my best to pick up the sharp shards of his windows that at one point glistened with wonder and imagination. All I could do was cry even more and tell him how sorry I was, how I would fix him. 

I told him, as I was trying to sew him back together, between sobs and sniffles and cries and outbursts, that he would get to walk across the whole Great Wall of China and bathe in the sacred wells of Scotland and eat fine German chocolate and pay respects to the Tibetan monks in the Himalayas. 

It was no use. No matter what I tried, he couldn't stand. He couldn't walk. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't imagine, he couldn't see, he couldn't laugh, he couldn't dream, he couldn't wake up. No matter how hard I tried, he couldn't reach out to hold my textbooks, he couldn't focus to read them. 

The Bear Who Wanted To See The World was gone. 

The evil of the children that day had soiled him, had soiled the fragile life force allowing him breath and existence. They broke him and his ability to function. 

His soft limp body now rests inside a huge gorgeous glass cabinet, filled with worldly artifacts and maps and compasses and textbooks and globes and everything I could find to try and wake him up again. Over the years I sort of gave up.

I never made the mistake of bearing children. I never dared create a human being. It seemed wrong in my opinion, to bring more earthly daemons into the world to kill and slaughter. I took care of myself medically so it wouldn't happen, not even accidentally. There would never even be a chance. 

Instead, I traveled the Earth, carrying what was left of my best friend. I walked across the whole Great Wall of China, I bathed in the sacred wells of Scotland, I tasted fine German chocolate, I payed my respects to the Tibetan monks of the Himalayas. He would've wanted it this way. 

And I'm sorry, but this story doesn't have a happy ending.