From My Window, Bear in Hand

The storm arrived just as little Emma discovered my secret. I'd been standing here for twenty minutes, watching them play in the garden — my grandchildren building their strange kingdom of mud and dreams — when she spotted me through the rain-streaked glass. I was spying, really. At eighty-two, you earn the right to observe without announcing yourself.

Lightning cracked the sky open, brilliant and terrible, and I jumped. So did the old bear in my hands — worn, matted fur, one button eye missing since 1957. He'd been with me through everything: first loves, heartbreaks, three children, Arthur's funeral, and now this. Some days, holding him, I'm six years old again, and the world hasn't yet taught me its hardest lessons.

Emma waved, then pointed at my bear. I could almost hear her young voice: *Why does Great-Grandmother keep that old thing?*

On the dresser behind me, family photographs rose in a pyramid — seven generations stacked carefully, like stones of a temple I'd built without realizing. My parents at their wedding. Arthur and me in Paris, young and foolish enough to think we had forever. Our children grown. Their children grown. And now these new ones, making mud kingdoms while storms rolled overhead.

Arthur always said wisdom was just accumulated memory, arranged properly. He was right, though he'd never admit it.

Another flash of lightning illuminated the garden, and I saw the grandchildren running toward the house, summoned by their mother. They were laughing, wet, alive. I pressed the bear's worn nose against my cheek. He smelled of cedar chest and decade after decade of being loved.

The back door burst open. "Grandma!" Emma called, shaking rain from her hair. "We saw you watching! Come play!"

And then, the surprise — she wasn't mocking my bear. She climbed onto the window seat beside me and wrapped her small arms around both of us. "He's beautiful," she whispered. "Does he have a name?"

"Barnaby," I said, and something in my chest loosened. "He's seen a lot."

"Tell me," she said, and lightning flashed again, and I began to speak, building another story into the pyramid of us.