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Honey (The Christmas Bear)
By Sharmagne Leland-St. John-Sylbert
Recently I was asked to name my favourite childhood toy, and I really
couldn't come up with one particular toy that I would classify as my
all-time
favourite. That set me to thinking.
My daughter's favourite "toy" was a white bear named Honey.
It was nineteen
hundred and eighty-four. We were still living at Chateau La
Fontaine. This
was Daisy's first Christmas, and she was exactly seven months
"new." In my
mind's eye, I can still see my husband, Richard, sitting cross-legged
on the
Oriental rug, He was wearing a bright red cashmere cardigan sweater
from that
wonderful shop in the Burlington Arcade, a drastic change from his
usual drab
khaki safari jackets. Daisy had on a little pink frock with
bluebirds
embroidered on the delicate white collar. She was settled cozily on
her
father’s lap, her arms curled around the red cashmere clad arms that
held
her. My friend Iris who attended her birth was also there as
were Iris's
mother Janet, and a handful of family members and close friends.
Daisy's
godfather Warren had sent a rather large box brilliantly wrapped in
Santa
Claus paper tied with red and green bows. (or Helen his secretary
had!)
When we opened the box, there was a black-eyed, fluffy, white bear
with a
slightly turned up pink nose, resting in an abundance of white tissue
paper.
Not a polar bear, mind you, just a plain white bear with a pink nose.
From
the time they first met, Warren and my husband, Dick, had always had a
pet
name for each other. It was "Honey." The second
that bear was lifted out of
that box, I took one look at it and said, "HONEY!"
Honey has a personality of "its" own. Honey is
androgynous. Some days she
seems to be a little girl bear and other times he is a rambunctious
little
boy bear. Some days she can be found wearing little pink tea
dresses and
other times looking quite nautical in his little blue and white sailor
suit
and red tie with the perfectly tied square knot. Honey has
traveled the
world with us. We figure he was about 7 months old when he came
to live with
us that last Christmas at La Fontaine. His first trip was to the
South of
France when he was a year old. S/he spent her days at Miami Plage near
the
Hotel Negresco and nights snuggled up in Daisy's tender arms in her
crib at
Le Grande Hotel du Cap. He met Prince on that trip.
Sometimes he got to
have his own seat on the aeroplane, such as the time we went to
Belgium to
visit Le Baron Jean-Patrick deSelys-Longchamps at Mellery en Brabant.
He
went on a boat ride down the Canals, with the Baron, in a small town
near Br
ugges. His little black eyes reflected the cobblestone
streets and the
Carolinian architecture in the quaint little village as we glided
past. Honey
went to live 'at' Canada when she was 2 1/2, and s/he went to New York
and
Hawai'i when s/he was 5. Honey had sunglasses and a little
yellow bathing
suit with green and orange trim. At 6, Honey traveled to England
and took
tea at the Ritz and met the Queen. She was wearing her little
frilly pink
tea-party dress (Honey, not Her Majesty.) At age 7, Honey went
to Vera Cruz,
Mexico, Berlin, Athens and Cairo.
In Greece, s/he got a little black Greek hat that was just her size,
and in
Mexico, a little white sailor hat with the name of the town
written on it in
tiny blue cursive letters. Honey met Liam Neeson and Andie Mac
Dowell while
floating down the Nile. When s/he was 8, s/he got to go to New
York again
and ride in Hansom cabs through Central Park, play on the swings near
Sheep's
Meadow and go to the Bronx Zoo. She had tea at the famous Palm
Court in the
Plaza Hotel and Shirley Temple cocktails at the Algonquin, ice cream
at
Rumplemayer's and trips to FAO "shorts". She met
Eloise and Al Pacino. She
went to Arlington, Washington when she was 9 and spent a summer on the
river
fly-fishing in a float boat and berry picking and picnicking on the
shores of
the Stillaguamish; the best steelhead river in the world! Honey
especially
loved Colonial Williamsburg when s/he was 10. S/he met all the
American Girl
Dolls! There were summers in Cabo San Lucas and Loretto in Baja,
Beaver Dam,
Wisconsin and Chicago, Illinois. Every Christmas there were
gifts under a
carefully decorated tree with Honey's name on them... boxes
and packages
full of little dresses and nightgowns and new hats. When Honey
went to
Washington DC, s/he somehow, got caught up in the linens, and when
Daisy and
her classmates turned to come home, Honey was missing. Perhaps
one of the
girls had hidden her as a mean joke. Daisy was devastated. She
had loved
that bear all her life and had never left home without her. She
even quit
Sunday School when she was 3 because a horrid woman had locked Honey
in the
closet and told Daisy she couldn't have the bear back until after the
Sunday
School class was over. When the plane landed in Los Angeles from
DC without
Honey, Daisy was so ill she couldn't deplane by herself. I had
to carry her
from her seat in the back of the plane all the way to the waiting
room. When
I asked her where Honey was she burst into tears, "BEAR
NAPPED!" As
soon as we got home at around midnight, I called the hotel in
Washington DC
and told them there was a reward for a small white bear with a patch
of fur
missing on her left leg, cataracts covering black eyes, a crooked
pushed in
pink nose, and who was last seen wearing a red flannel Lanz nightgown
with
little brown teddy bears on it. Daisy didn't sleep well at all
that night.
None of us did. It was as if one of our own children had gone
missing. Two
days, a message was sent up to me in the Library at school where I
volunteered. "Would Mrs. Sylbert please come down to the
office? " No one
likes to be called into the school office, so with butterflies in my
tummy, I
descended Victorian stairs and presented my dubious self to Rose, the
administrator's assistant.
"Oh! There's a package here for you," she said.
I had been expecting some books from the book faire. I picked up
the "rather
too light for books"box and returned to the library, a tad
disappointed that
it was not the books I had ordered. From a moment of
disappointment, there
are no words to express my happiness and relief when I opened that box
and
found Honey sleeping quietly on a bed of white tissue paper in her red
and
white flannel Lanz nightgown with the teddy bears on it. And I shall
never
forget the look of relief and love on my daughter Daisy's face when a
few
minutes later I nonchalantly tiptoed past the open door of her
classroom with
Honey riding high on my shoulders.
This December, give a child the gift of a teddy bear, a toy they will
love
and remember forever.
Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Good Yule, Ramadan,
Winter
Solstice, Saturnalia or whatever holiday you and your loved ones
celebrate at
this time of the year.
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