Coco Bear, a love story

This is a story about a little girl and her stuffed bear. I don't believe any bear had ever been more loved by a child than this one. I'm not even sure if Christopher Robin and Edward Bear (of course that would be Winnie the Pooh to you) had the love for each other that this little girl had for her bear.

It all started the Christmas she was two.

My Grandpa Brinkerhoff, who was by then a re-married former widower, got Christmas presents for my children. Not too unusual I admit. For my two youngest, Shawn and Courtney, he got two stuffed bears. The one meant for Courtney (after all it was wrapped with her name on it) was a sweet fluffy little white bear with a red paw that when squeezed would play a Christmas song.

Which song it was I have no idea, my memory is certainly not that good.

Now the other bear, was a cute but somewhat nondescript little brown bear. He didn't make music, he didn't really do anything other than expect to be cuddled.

To this day, I still don't know why, but the second Courtney had a good look at Shawn's plain brown bear, she had eyes for nothing else under the Christmas tree that year. Within a few days, little brown bear was not only no longer Shawn's. But it had been elevated to the status of the only toy Courtney had any interest in.

I realized that a bear this special needed a proper name.

Courtney for some reason had made it known that this bear was a boy bear. How do children decide these things? That's something that has mystified me for years. The fact was though that she had fallen for her first boy, and he was a bear.

I ran a few names past her. None of them would stick. I didn't think she would really want him named Teflon or Blueberry which were some early version names that didn't seem right to either of us. Suddenly I remembered a book that my little brother Brian had loved as a child. It was about a little monkey boy named Arthur.

Arthur also had a beloved bear. His bear was named Honey Bear.

The book was a cute one that I had always enjoyed, so just on an off chance, I ran the name Coco Bear by Courtney. I didn't want to plagiarize. I thought, Honey? Coco? Close enough. Apparently it was inevitable that this bear was meant to be named Coco. Courtney pounced right on it and from that moment on Coco Bear was born.

For the rest of her toddler and early childhood, Courtney would not go anywhere without her Coco Bear. He slept with her, he sat with her while she ate. He was even lucky enough, one day, to accompany her to a day of Kindergarten.

It was one of those bring your stuffed animal to school with you days.

Her heart was so devoted to that bear that on gift giving occasions there was absolutely NO point in getting her any kind of doll. Baby or otherwise. She seemed offended at the thought of her Coco not being an only bear.

Don't worry though, she may have been one of the few girls who never played with dolls, but Coco turned out to be a pretty all purpose bear.

Coco even had a voice. Sure it may have been provided by Courtney, but it was definitely Coco supplying the words.

Is it possible to have an imaginary friend who is actually tangible? I assume so, because that was also one of Coco's duties. He and Courtney would have conversations all the time. Coco had some pretty strong opinions as I recall.

Sometimes even to Courtney's dismay.

Most of the time of course those two were both on the same page.

I can't forget to mention the controversies, at times, concerning Coco. Courtney is my baby. The youngest of my five children. Now Shawn, who was only 17 months older than Courtney, had no problem with Courtney and her Coco.

He didn't even remember that the little brown bear was in reality his property.

For Shawn, if Courtney said that Coco was real, well, who was he to argue. Shawn still takes things at face value, but when he was three I don't think he ever questioned things like who or what is real and who isn't. This was one of the reasons I believe, why Shawn and Courtney were so close. Shawn just followed Courtney and believed everything she taught him.

Unfortunately, Courtney's older siblings, had a better grounding in reality.

I think it would be somewhat safe to say that those three older siblings, at best tolerated Coco, and at worst loved to threaten various harms towards his fluffy little being.

Not that they didn't have reason.

Coco's favorite form of communication was to get right in your face and talk in an undiscernible, high, squeaky voice that could only be described as fingernails on a chalkboard.

It was not pleasant.

Even when Coco hadn't chosen a particular victim. he still could be heard from one end of the house to the other. For being a bear, he most the time sounded like a monkey. A monkey in great distress to be more accurate. I have to admit that at times I even needed some respite from that noisy little bear. It's funny too, because Courtney herself, had the softest, sweetest, little girl voice you could ever have heard.

I won't go into the gruesome details, but suffice it to say that some rather heinous tricks were played on that little bear. I seem to remember spending quite a lot of time saving Coco from angry, annoyed older siblings.

It amounted to many unpleasantnesses in our household. I think Courtney might still be a little bit scarred.

Unbelievably though, was that she never was too freaked out when I would plop him into the washer for his bi-monthly "bath". I had of course quite carefully explained to her that Coco needed cleaning and that going through the washing machine was one of the things he enjoyed most.

Fortunately Coco corroborated my story.

There were also the routine check-ups. Over the years Coco ended up with various rips and tears. No problem though. I had a spool of coco bear brown heavy duty thread. He needed patching up usually a couple times a year. To this day when Courtney sees that spool of thread she smiles and asks, is that Coco's thread. (She knows it is of course but she still likes to ask.)

I think that since I was one of Coco's most prominent defenders, Courtney knew she could trust me to always have his best interests in mind.

Well as always happens little girls grow up. You know, the whole "Puff the magic dragon" scenario. I don't believe that my youngest ever lost her love for her favorite little friend. Coco still remained, most the times at least, front and center on her bed. She never stopped loving him with all her heart. it just became sort of a long distance love affair.

She knew she loved Coco. Coco knew she loved him. They had matured to the point where Coco didn't feel too bad that Courtney was suddenly interested in other things than playing with him. It seems to me like there were even times when Coco seemed to be away on vacations.
These were the times when I almost had to wonder what had happened to a seemingly absent Coco bear. Of course these little vacations never were for too long.

Coco always came back. I summed it up to the various messy stages of Courtney's room.
So that was how it had become for Courtney and Coco. A relationship that only they understood.

Then came the day when our house was sold and we moved into our much nicer, current house.

Moving out of a house that we had lived in for close to 18 years was one of the biggest pains our family has ever gone through. The sheer enormity of the task of packing up and getting rid of 18 years worth of stuff was almost more than I could handle. Fortunately Jeff and Heidi came to help, and Donald and Lisa were there as well.
In a much shorter time than I would have imagined possible almost everything was either tossed or packed.

Except for Courtney's room.

That child of mine must have felt even more overwhelmed than me. I kept getting on her about clearing out her room. She would do a token job of it and then quit.

Moving day came and furniture and boxes were taken from point old to point new.

That meant even Courtney's furniture was moved. Unfortunately it also meant that her room had the most "post moved" junk left in it. She had even more to wade through than my old sewing room had.

And that is saying a LOT.

We threatened, we cajoled, we bribed. Nothing could get her into that room to save whatever she wanted saved. Decisions had to be made. Heidi and Don and I, and I think maybe Lisa too, or it might have been Donald, well anyway, the bunch of us went in there with a couple of garbage bags.

One for things to keep, one for things to dispose of.

Now I was there, and to the very best of my knowledge Coco bear was NO WHERE in sight. If he had been I would have gathered him up and sent him to safety. And not the safety of the "to keep" bag, either.

No, I would have taken him straight to my van.

To this day I really have no idea what happened to that bear. If you have ever moved I'm sure you can relate to how hard it can be to keep tabs on every little thing, no matter how valued.

So it is with sadness in my heart that I have to report that Courtney's dear, beloved, Coco Bear, has never been seen again since the big move.

The really sad thing is that it took quite a while for his absence to really become known. It took me forever (at least it seemed that way) for all the different boxes to be unloaded and for our belongings to be put in their new designated places.

I always have thought of Coco's disappearance as the kind of story where a family on vacation might travel fifty miles or more before realizing that they left little Bobby behind at the last rest stop. Even though I know that I was not responsible for Coco's disappearance, I still feel guilty that we could have forgotten him so easily.

Coco was a Gund stuffed animal, if you are familiar with that brand. I went to the Gund site hoping that, even though it had been so many years, that they would still have Coco Bears for sale.

No such luck.

Courtney mourns her missing bear still. She has never entered a thrift shop like Goodwill without taking a quick look through the toy section just to see if her dear little Coco might be there, just waiting for her to find him. He has never turned up in over three and a half years, but she hasn't given up hope yet.

True love is simply that, true.

She will never forget that bear, and I would like to think that if he is still out there somewhere. Sitting on the shelf of some "used goods" store, or laying forgotten in some other child's toy box.

That he has never, ever forgotten His Courtney.



Courtney and Coco Bear: Friends Forever!