I, um, I thought you might want this back.”I pull out the battered old teddy bear and hold it toward him. He frowns and shakes his head and doesn’t reach for it, and I feel like he’s punched me in the gut.Then my baby brother slaps that damned bear out of my hand and crushes his face against my chest, and beneath the odors of sweat and strong soap I can smell it, his smell, Sammy’s, my brother’s.
But the most wonderful thing of all, our highest achievement and the one thing for which I pray we will always be remembered, is stuffing wads of polyester into an anatomically incorrect, cartoonish ideal of one of nature's most fearsome predators for no other reason than to soothe a child.