A letter waiting for me in a gastrectomized bear by Cali O’Donovan (17, California)

That pink teddy bear has been in my room my entire life. It came with us on each move, stuffed into a suitcase and spat back out onto my new bed, its eyes fixed on me again in each new room, watching me always. That pink teddy bear has never had a name to me. I’m not sure I ever really liked it as a child. It was ragged and old, its figure stiff and its design uninteresting. Its glassy black eyes peeked out from behind tufts of faded fur, bubblegum dye bleeding out to the ends of each coarse hair on its aging coat. 

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Mom and Grandma washed out its faded fur as much as they could, and they did a good job. I never thought of the bear as dirty. In a way I was really quite fond of it. The pink teddy bear was among my most important toys: Baby Gavin, Nee, Hippo, Fella, and the pink teddy bear. That old, boring, faded thing never earned a name from me - it wasn’t new and polished enough - but I held it close to my heart all the same. The pink teddy bear would stay on my bed into my teenage years as other dolls disappeared into storage or went off to Goodwill. Its watchful eyes would fade over the years, shiny beads dulled and scratched to match its worn out fur, and those dulling eyes would seem to bring the bear a softer appearance. I am seventeen now, and still I keep that pink teddy bear by my pillow. I will probably keep it for the rest of my life.
It used to be my mother’s. She never named it either. Grandma gave it to her the day she was born, when it was nearly twice her size. In old family photos the bear lies next to my mother in her crib, its bubblegum fur hidden in black and white photographs. When my mom became pregnant with me, her first child, she still owned the pink bear, though its fur had begun to fade and its seams to loosen. So that she could pass it on to me on the day I was born, my mom and my Grandma cleaned out the pink teddy bear; they sliced open its stomach and removed its stuffing so that the bear’s hollow pelt could be put through the laundry for several cycles. They
scrubbed the grime from the crevices of its form, replaced its eyes with those beady glass ones, and filled it with fresh stuffing - and in the middle of all that stuffing my mother left a note for me. A note for me to open when I become a mother and tear apart the bear again to clean it for my child. (I’m not sure I ever intend to be pregnant, but that’s how my mother always said it would go.) She told me that when I’m pregnant with my first child she and I will clean out the bear just as she did with her mother, and while we get it ready I’ll write a note to my unborn child and seal it in with fresh stuffing, and I’ll finally read a letter she wrote me before we’d met.
I’ve always wondered what it is she wanted to tell me before I’d even been born. My mother sometimes has a flair for the dramatic, so perhaps it is some unexpected revelation - a secret she knew 17 years ago she would never tell me until I could read it myself as an adult. Or maybe it's some advice as I enter motherhood, but I hope that isn’t it. As unoriginal as it would be, I hope her note merely reminds me of her unconditional love and tells me that even though I haven’t been born yet she loves me. I hope she wrote that she can’t wait to meet me and see the person I grow up to be, and that she’ll love me no matter what, and that years from now when it seems like she doesn’t care she really does, that her life has just been filled with a lot of struggle so sometimes she will seem unhappy but it won’t be my fault because I haven’t even been born yet but already I’m bringing her joy, and that she knows she will grow to love me more every day that she knows me. I hope that notes reads all the things I haven’t heard my mother say for awhile.
I picture that pink teddy bear with my letter where its heart should be, filled with aged stuffing and with the love my mother once had for me. I’m seventeen years old, and I still keep that teddy bear on my bed, by my pillow, hoping it might contain an immortalized account of how much my mom used to love me before we met. 

Cali O’Donovan is a seventeen-year-old writer from Los Angeles, California. She enjoys writing poetry, short stories and essays, and she soon hopes to major in English to further pursue her love of writing. When she’s not writing, she's usually playing piano or reading an Agatha Christie novel.