Little Charlie’s Travels

Before my wife and I brought a child into this world, we had Little Charlie.

Little Charlie is a small teddy bear. He appears to be of the Ursus maritimus species. My wife, Maria, nicked him in 2011 at a fiber optics convention she attended for work. He was one of the free giveaways at the General Photonics booth, which is embroidered on Little Charlie’s fuzzy chest. She feigned interest in their products just so she could get him. Maria brought him home around the time we started dating. She named him after Charlie Chaplin because she imagined him to be a rambunctious scamp. This is all noted in a short story I got published in Prairie Schooner.

For years, Little Charlie was like our pretend kid. Under the guise of our spirited little rascal, Maria would write me cutesy goofy notes and leave them on my backpack when I would wake up at her apartment before I would head home. In turn, I would slip notes from Little Charlie under the bathroom door when Maria was taking care of her business. I don’t know who started that, but it was a thing we did, and all the notes were in Little Charlie’s child-like scrawl with backwards Rs and misspellings (like “pikturs”). In our teddy bear epistolary, Maria was “mama” and I was “papa.”

Naturally, once Maria and I began taking trips together, we brought Little Charlie along on our adventures. If it wasn’t Charlie, we’d bring Chepita, the stuffed animal lamb my sisters gave me in 2009 before I was diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma. Before we knew it, Little Charlie became an integral part of our trips. Throughout our relationship, I’ve primarily been our visual chronicler, so I would pose Little Charlie or Chepita for panoramic pictures or goofy portraits. It brought joy and a healthy dose of absurdity to the travels we were fortunate to have.

In 2014, the year we got hitched, Maria and I brought Little Charlie along for our honeymoon. And so, I snapped pictures of Little Charlie sitting by a tree in Amsterdam’s gorgeous Vondelpark, strolling beside pedestrians in a promotional print of a Vincent Van Gogh painting, sitting atop Het Zinneke, the peeing dog statue in Brussels, and at various iconic locales in the City of Lights. In short time, coupled with trips to Seattle, Big Sur, and New Mexico, we had accrued a dazzling portfolio of pictures of a promotional toy giveaway from his progenitor, General Photonics. And then, one day I got an idea: what if we printed these pictures and anonymously mailed one each month to their company headquarters?

Like clockwork, at the beginning of each month for one year, the home office of General Photonics in Chino, CA received an envelope from us with a picture of Little Charlie seemingly traveling around this vast and beautiful planet. With the final mailing, I broke protocol and included not one, not two but three pictures of Little Charlie. In the final picture, a self-portrait, we unveiled ourselves sitting on a bench in Père Lachaise with Little Charlie between us.

With that mailing, Maria and I playfully included our first names and return address, but we never heard from General Photonics, which—although expected—was nevertheless a petite bummer (or, as the French would say, une petite deception). Maria and I have no idea what they did with the pictures we sent them. In our most excellent and righteous vision, we imagined some poor underpaid receptionist opening the envelopes, quickly deducing the pattern (look, another picture of that weird bear!), then collecting and tacking the pictures on a corkboard over their dispiriting desk. In all likelihood, they were tossed in the trash, which is fine, of course. What matters is our intention and the effort we put forth!

In 2017, Maria and I welcomed our son into this world. Thus far, we’ve only taken one family trip past the greater Bay Area. Until we can give our four-year-old son the opportunity to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19, we’re not boarding a plane with him.

And so, our travels have literally been grounded. Little Charlie hasn’t boarded an airplane in over five years. With the plights and grave challenges we collectively face, I know this isn’t something to genuinely grieve, but I am eager to see what adventures the future may hold for my trinity and our globe-trotting teddy bear.