RIP, Minty Bear.

We have returned from Montauk, full of sandy, lobster-rolly memories, but missing a beloved member of our family: Minty Bear.

Henry and Minty Bear.

I bought Minty Bear--so named for her pastel-green hue—when I was five months pregnant. When I didn't yet understand that when you have a baby, the world dumps truckloads of stuffed animals over your head. When I couldn't have predicted that within months we would be cramming animals into industrial-sized plastic bags and hauling them to the Salvation Army, where they would join their bereft, plushy brethren.

Anyway, when Henry was an infant we kept Minty Bear in his crib, because it didn't have any pull-out eyes or pop-'em-off buttons or related chokeables. He liked it fine, but then again he was also smitten with the ceiling fan, and would spend hours chuckling at it. There you go again, ceiling fan. Whirling and whirling. Oh, ceiling fan, you are a minx. But as the months passed he developed a decided preference for Minty over the ten or so stuffed animals that we had room for. Sure, he had the occasional fling with Black Bear or Teensy the Elephant. There was that weird jag with Tup Tup, the hard-bodied, scratchy-furred Siamese Cat Steiff. But in the end, he always came back to Minty.

The Minty/Henry bond was only strengthened over the years. Every night, he gathered Minty Bear in his arms and hunkered down on top of her. Every morning, he dragged her out of bed and downstairs to join him in buildng his mighty Lego Army, occasionally stopping to kiss her ears and murmur her name. He enjoyed discussing her positive attributes: her softness, her excellent smell. (A smell built up from countless nights of either drooling or peeing on her—or, hell, both--which no amount of washing could totally expunge.) She was his baby. His words.

The night we returned from Montauk, Scott asked me, as he does most nights, where Minty Bear had gone to. Henry made do that night with Black Bear while the two of us searched. And searched and searched. And I realized that at the hotel, I had failed to execute a final under-the-bed search before we left, although I had checked every other nook and cranny of the room. I called the hotel. The woman who answered the phone promised to call if it was found, but when I offered to give her a description, she just said, "It's a bear. Got it," and hung up. I didn't hold out much hope.

The next morning we told Henry that Minty Bear was probably gone for good. He asked me to call the hotel again, which I did. No luck. He nodded and said, "Okay, next we need to call the police." I tried to explain that typically the police weren't called in such matters. That's when his lower lip started trembling. "You mean I'll never see her again? Not even when I die?"

It went on like that for a while. He wept for her and also recited poetry on the spot about Minty Bear "going to sea" while his heart "blew up." He had us both in tears by the end when he sang a song called "Bye Minty/Bye Henry," in which both bear and boy bid each other adieu, forever and ever. (He sang both parts.)

Then he asked me to call the hotel again.

He seemed to recover after that, although he had moments—moments in which he demanded that I look at him as his eyes spilled big fat teardrops and he whispered "I'll never see Minty again." My own heart was blowing up. I called the hotel a few more times. They didn't ask me not to call again, but they thought it.

Then, yesterday, we found another Minty Bear. We were at a toy store, finding a present for another child, a child whose parents have probably never misplaced that child's best friend and soulmate, when I spied Minty Bear II on a shelf. I picked it up. I wasn't sure if this was a good move.

"Henry?" I said, and showed it to him. He looked it over, gave it a hug."It doesn't feel right," he said. "It feels too fat." He looked at it some more. "No, it's good. I think we should take it."

But on the way home he wept more for Minty Bear, and I doubted the wisdom of the purchase. "Oh Minty," he keened. "Gone forever."

"Maybe we should tell this Minty Bear about the other one, so she knows how special she was to you."

Nothing from the backseat. Then: "You go first."

So I told Minty Bear II all about Minty Bear I. How I had found her in a store when Henry wasn't born yet, and I knew she was meant to be his bear. How much Henry loved her. How he loved to smell her ears, which smelled like stale little-boy pee (I didn't say that part). And how she was his baby.

Then I kept going. I said that Minty Bear loved Henry so much that she told all her relatives about him, about this great deal she had with this amazing little boy. And her relatives were jealous. Why do you get all that love when we're stuck in this toy store? they wondered. So she cut a deal with one of her cousins, a bear who happened to be waiting for a boy of his own in New Jersey, of all places. I've had plenty of good years, she told her cousin, so I'll take off and maybe, just maybe, they'll find you. And that's just what happened. And in this way Henry made two bears very, very happy.

He was suspiciously quiet. Was he sleeping? I pulled up to the house and turned around. He was staring at the bear. He looked at me. "We did a good thing," he said. He kissed the new Minty Bear's ears, and closed his eyes.

Om mani padme hum

When your child has a week off between school and camp, and you are helpless to do much of anything but go along with his childish whims, you learn things. Happily, you learn that when you adopt a Zen-like attitude, abandoning all wants and desires and living purely in the moment, your child can be ... fun.

You will realize, quickly, that most of your annoyance (which is sometimes unfettered rage, because let's face it, you have issues) stems not from your son's actions per se but that his actions generally run exactly counter to whatever you need him to do. The timetable of the preschooler is not compatible in the slightest with the timetable of reality. For instance, you could say to the preschooler, after giving many friendly time-is-almost-up warnings, "Time to go!," and the preschooler will say, "Yes, but first I have to do X"—x being "construct a lego battleship" or "tell you a long, convoluted story involving a transformer" or "watch two hours of Jimmy Neutron." Once he's announced this, there is no moving him, although you still do, hoisting all 45 pounds of him into the car as he shouts I AM NOT DONE YET ARE YOU LISTENING. Sometimes this will happen as you are crossing a street and you will find yourself pulling at your child's wrist and hissing there is a car coming MOVE IT but he believes that time has simply frozen while he provides the backstory on his imagined rocketship adventures. And to do this he must stop walking. To concentrate on the hand gestures. While a painful death swiftly approaches. But I digress!

But when you have no agenda, nowhere to go, and nothing in particular to do, you can pass the day at the leisurely pace that the preschooler demands. And you see that his adventure-filled brain is not without its entertainment value. You can, say, spend an hour in the backyard engaging in a "tickle battle," and watch your son strike all manner of hilarious ninja poses before he strikes at your midsection with his Tickling Fists of Death. You don't have to hurry him through bathtime because he's not an hour late for bed, so he can spend a full hour lying on his back with his ears underwater, singing songs he is composing on the spot, your little half-submerged Marvin Hamlisch. You can play Magneto and MagLady, with MagDog and MagKitty standing by in case of extreme peril. He can list his many favorite colors (every one of them but yellow, in case you're interested) and you don't feel like you want to pierce your skull with a fork—because you're not late, no one is expecting you, and there's nothing you have to cross off your list.

Of course, you can do all this knowing that he'll be in camp by Monday. Thank God.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing

School

At school, you learn math. Here is a math question:

Are we going to ride a bike, or not ride a bike?

The answer is: RIDE A BIKE. When correcting your student, karate chop the air with each word and then glare at her for at least five seconds. Math is important!

Extra credit: after 39 comes 30-10.

God

Is just a burning bush.

Mosquitoes

Will remove all your blood if you're not careful.

Work

When you are the boss, you should be the #1 boss.

A good boss will always shout at his subordinates. He can shout the following:

I command you to make me a sandwich!

Work or you'll be fired!

Work I will give you threats!

Work or I will kill you! With a boomerang!

Your subordinates will tolerate boomerang-talk more than they will talk of guns, so go with BOOMERANGS.

What Henry thinks I am thinking, all the time.

I wonder what Henry’s playing with, over there. Why won’t he show me?

Is his Lego construction any different, now that he’s done some magical new thing to it?

And now? Is it different?

And now?

Now?

Now now now now now?

It can’t be different again—or can it?

I wonder if Henry can jump on one leg? Too bad I’ll never find out.

Now I’m wondering about that other leg.

I keep looking away because I forget I have a son. Good thing he understands and reminds me!

What does the food in Henry’s mouth look like, when he’s eating? I wish there was a way for me to see that.

Is Henry doing something fun with his socks? I hope he shows me.

I would look over to see the dog doing something cute, if only Henry would tell me to.

Did the dog’s expression change slightly? I’ll wait for Henry to look first and let me know.

It is important for me to be aware of each and every squirrel in the yard. Good thing Henry’s on the job, with that.

This magazine is so boring, but I feel awkward , looking up to watch Henry’s television program. That’s his thing. I wish I could share in it.

I’ll guess I’ll go back to reading, after he showed me that last thing. I wish I could see more.

And more.

And more and more and more.

Good thing I threw that magazine on the coffee table! Now I get to watch Curious George.