Chester
By:Beth Ceragioli
It all began with a special bond between a young boy and his bear……..
One day, Charlie, a boy of age seven, was dragged to the grocery store by his mother. That is where he met his best friend, Chester.
Chester was a circus bear wearing a rainbow ascot and a matching hat. His fur was as soft as a down-feather pillow, and he smelled of sweet bread and cotton candy.
Charlie knew at that moment that they would forever be inseparable: Charlie and Chester forever and eternity. The only predicament was how to talk Charlie’s mom into letting him keep a five-and-a-half foot tall, three feet wide circus bear in their clean, quiet, suburban home.
He considered lying to his mother, but then he remembered what she would do to him if she ever caught him in a lie. The thought alone encouraged him to jump out of his own skin.
As his mother, he, and Chester strolled through the produce aisle, Charlie conjured up wacky ideas in order to maintain his new best friend. Chester followed Charlie, ready and willing for anything. Charlie finally gathered the courage to speak to his mom.
“Mommy?” Charlie whispered tugging at his mother’s purse.
“Yes, Charlie?” his mom replied squatting down to be at eye level with her son.
“Ca…” Charlie got nervous and began to slam all of his words into one, big, long word, “IFoundACircusBearNamedChesterAndWe’reGoingToBeBestFriendsCanIKeepHim?! PLEASE?!”
His mom was shocked that he could get out that many words in just one breath. After pondering that thought for a few seconds, she realized that Charlie must be talking about an imaginary friend.
“Why, Charlie!” she says. “taking care of a circus bear requires a lot of responsibility, are you positive you can handle that?”
“Yes! So can he stay with us?”
“Yes, he can,” she sputtered out as she loaded her few bags of groceries into the trunk of their car.
Chester and Charlie sat in the backseat. They talked of pirate ships, video games, the circus, and treasure hunting. They planned on going on a treasure hunt with Chester’s circus friends on a pirate ship in search of a long lost video game. Boy, the crazy things those two could conjur.
As Charlie’s mother overheard her son having a conversation with the thin air, she said under her breath, “How good it is to be young and naïve.” She personally thought the idea of an imaginary friend was pointless, but she was happy as long as Charlie was happy.
They all finally arrived at the quiet suburban house. Charlie and Chester jumped out of the car, and sprinted through the front door, abolishing anything in their way, including his mother’s azalea garden. Thankfully, she didn’t notice the difference.
Chester and Charlie went up to Charlie’s room to calm down and to start thinking up another fun game. They tried to calm down, but they just couldn’t do it.
His mother attempted to relax, but the couch on which she was resting was located directly under Charlie’s room, the noisiest spot in the house. She knew then that this imaginary friend would soon have to disappear.
That whole day was filled with undefined chaos. She did not dare go upstairs to investigate the raucous. The hours passed as if they had been years, and at last, the clock struck ten: bed time, the highlight of her day.
Charlie’s mother trudged up the stairs excitedly. She joyously swung open the door which held all the world’s chaotic notions and sang, “Bed time!” to Charlie and Chester.
She suddenly realized, there was a three feet wide, five-and-a-half-foot tall circus bear in her little boy’s room. He was dressed in rainbow attire and his scent of sweet bread and cotton candy dispersed throughout the room. The mother shook her head in disbelief.
Charlie was dresses in an old ragged pirate costume and held a torn piece of parchment paper in his palm.
Outside the window sat a pirate ship filled with lions, mimes, acrobats, clowns, and so on and so forth. His mother had stepped into Charlie and Chester’s reality. She felt as if she too were at the age of seven.
“Mommy, we have to complete out treasure hunt for the long lost video game! We’ve been preparing for hours!” whined Charlie.
“Can I go too?” his mother gently requested. Charlie and Chester simultaneously nodded.
The three of them hopped on board and set sail off into the distance to embark on their neverending journey.
My daughter, Beth, took this writing and turned it into a book. She bounded the pages with thread and construction paper and then drew illustrations for each section. A child's imagination! My first memory of drawing was before I began school. I took an orange crayon and drew a large pumpkin in my closet. Funny, my father's pet name for me was "pumpkin".
