BrandiBlog

Tonight as I put my son to bed, I had one of those “ah ha” moments. You know, one of those moments when all of a sudden everything just makes sense? Yeah, one of those. And it all revolved around something simple–a small, brown teddy bear.

My husband gave me that teddy bear on the first Valentine’s Day that we celebrated together. I was never a fan of Valentine’s Day. In fact, I actually detested that Hallmark-mandated holiday. Everything about it made me cringe–the hearts, the rock-hard little candies, the stupid little cupids. To say I disliked Valentine’s Day was the understatement of the century. The whole thing made me want to puke.

But that Valentine’s Day something strange happened. I was teaching special education at a middle school in Ahwahtukee. The office secretary called my classroom and asked that I send a runner down to the office to pick something up. I, of course, assumed that it was a newsletter or something that I needed to send home with the students at the end of the day. So I sent Justin, a sweet, goofy 8th grade boy with a bit of a speech impediment. He was gone for about 5 minutes and then reappeared in my classroom carrying a bouquet of red roses and a precious teddy bear. He said to me, “Well Miss Eib, it looks like you gots a seeket amiah.” A what??? (For those of you who may be as perplexed as I was, he was trying to say “secret admirer”. If you figured that out, take 10 points for cracking that code).

I took the flowers and teddy bear from Justin and read the card. It was from Matt. Much like the Grinch Who Stole Christmas, my heart grew three sizes that day. No longer did I hate Valentine’s Day so much. Someone loved me! I wanted to yell it out from the school rooftop. I wanted to have it broadcast on the 6 o’clock news. I wanted to jump out of my skin! Instead, I wrote Matt an e-mail and professed my undying love for him. Yeah, I’m a dork like that.

So I’ve kept that little teddy bear close to me ever since. He sat on the edge of the dresser next to my bed for the next two years. Then he sat on Matt’s dresser in his room at his best friend’s house for six weeks while we lived there, waiting to move into our new house after my townhouse sold. Following that, the little teddy bear sat on the bed in our guest room (which I had deemed “the baby’s room” a year before Ryan was even conceived). Once the crib arrived in that room, the teddy bear moved into Ryan’s crib. And there he stayed up until now.

Tonight when I took Ryan into our bedroom to put him to sleep, the teddy bear was laying in the middle of the bed where Ryan normally sleeps. My mom, who had been watching Ryan earlier when I was at work, must have put the bear there. So I sat Ryan next to it to see what would happen. That boy grabbed the teddy bear, smooshed him to his chest and gave him a kiss on the nose. I laughed as I watched him play with that little teddy bear. Then, out of no where, I started to cry. It was so overwhelming–seeing my son, OUR son, love that teddy bear as much as I did. I was witnessing everything coming full circle. I told him, “Daddy gave Mommy that teddy bear. Now he can be yours, too.” He laughed and gave me that, “Mommy, you’re so crazy,” look. I didn’t care, though. That bears journey finally found it’s happy ending.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 19th, 2007 at 7:26 pm and is filed under Family, Life, Motherhood. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.