“Tu n’es encore pour moi qu’un petit garçon tout semblable à cent mille petits garçons. Et je n’ai pas besoin de toi. Et tu n’as pas besoin de moi non plus. Je ne suis pour toi qu’un renard semblable à cent mille renards. Mais, si tu m’apprivoises, nous aurons besoin l’un de l’autre. Tu seras pour moi unique au monde. Je serai pour toi unique au monde.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince

Spotted on a Sunday, on a fence: a panda, small and frayed at the ears and missing a tail and clearly, someone’s best friend. Someone small. Seated, waiting patiently, to be found and brought home, where it is being missed, desperately. Unless another’s been bought. But no. Some things are not just things. On one side of the fence,

a playground, sunny and Sunday-alive with laughing, running, sliding, hopscotching, swinging, blue eyes wide, flying, blue coats fluttering like wings, faster, higher! boots running through the air. Post-card-blue sky.

On the other side of the fence: dustbins in the street, set out for Monday pick-up, overflowing. A week’s worth of life used up: newspapers, banana peels, empty shoeboxes and parcels, soup tins, bags of crisps, wine bottles and wilting roses that must have been pretty. A sweater someone discarded. A snag on the sleeve. Loopy.

Some things are just things. On Monday, the street is clear.

The dustbins are empty, wheeled in, their contents unmissed. The playground is empty too. The panda is still there. There are many cars, on one side of the street, most in a hurry, angry, chasing important things. Things that buy other things: shoes and parcels, homes filled with roses and sweaters… On Tuesday, it rains.

The little, someone’s bear is soaked and still waiting patiently, on the fence, white and black fur matted, big black button eyes gleaming. Still seated, confident it will be found, picked up, dearly missed, warmed and dried, brought home, to a home where time will have stopped, and life held its breath. Because it has no choice, it always does, when waiting for a friend.

Because some things, ragged and frayed and missing tails, ears, or whole areas of fur, cannot be discarded. Forgotten, replaced. Some things are more than things; safe, loyal, and smelling of a person, a place. A sensation; happiness on snowdays, courage on planes and trains and on first days, comfort on cold ones, solace when it rains.

Some things are companions that make trips adventures, journeys less daunting, the world less enormous; playgrounds, streets. On Wednesday, someone picks up the panda. Someone big, for someone small who has been waiting, breath held, for a whole lifetime it seems, for the return of a friend.

At least, that is what I believe. It is all I can, as a storm knocks trees down on Thursday, rips posters in half, cuts the power out and turns an entire city dark and cold… it must have been saved, the panda bear. It must have been. It was.

Found, picked up, dearly missed. It is warm, dry, home now. I choose belief, and a postcard-blue-view of the sky. On a Friday, at four a.m.  A few hours later, there is nothing to spot as I walk past the fence.