I dragged Bear by his unproportionally short arm for another intense session of Olympic training. Like any other coach, I commanded him to perform his pre-diving stretches (as to avoid injuries), and he obeyed without complaint, stretching his flexible appendages as only a boneless bear could.

“I’m going to be the best diver in the world one day,” he tells me. “An Olympian.”

I laugh.

Bear frowns. “Have faith,” he states.

I set Bear on his two hind paws by the side of the old backyard pool and grabbed his plush, furry frame from behind, preparing him for the technical dive ahead. Three… two… one… liftoff! I flung him into the air and watched him rocket skywards.

His limp body exploded into the air, vanishing into a small brown dot. I waited for the familiar splash, for the violent disturbances across the surface of the water, for any indication that Bear had completed his dive.
I readied to flash the ten.

Where was Bear? Where was he? Houston, we have a problem. Has he disintegrated during reentry?

I swept through the freshly-mowed lawn and rummaged around the berried brambles for the missing Olympian, but alas, he was nowhere to be found. As the search bore no fruit, my dejected spirits were quickly forgotten when my tiny attention span found interest in another matter, and the Olympic bear-diver bleached into a vague childhood memory.

As the years passed, I had my own unique adventures. Six years later, I found myself sleeping under a table, fearing Chicken Little’s warning that “the sky is falling” would become reality as Hurricane Ike rolled towards land from the raging waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Congested highways had forced us to stay home, the rain (plit-plat, plit-plat) had forced us to remain indoors, the boarded windowpanes forced us to submit to darkness.

Wind. Water. We waited. The ominous, charcoal rainclouds lifted, and the early autumn radiance of southeastern Texas returned. Like devastated Pompeii, our vicinity was still and silent, buried by a layer of ashy, post-hurricane leaves and concealed by a newly formed watercourse. Trowbridge Drive it was no more, but rather, Trowbridge River.

As I stomped through knee-deep waters wielding wind-blown trash bags and a plastic whisk broom, I attempted to clear my street of debris, shoving away armfuls of fallen leaves from the clogged storm drain covers when an unproportionally short, chocolate arm caught my eye. It belonged to no other than Bear, tattered and weathered, sporting a tear on the side of his leg. His hair, matted and tangled with leaves, stuck up in all directions, coarse and soiled, no longer resembling the physique of an ex-Olympic diver. Nevertheless, he had battled against Mother Nature’s wicked forces for six years, victorious against thunderstorms, ice blankets, and ravenous, scavenging birds. His eyes were scratched and weary, his nose oddly misaligned, his ears frayed and drooping. But one feature remained exactly the same: his smile.

It was a smile that boasted pride, flaunting the loose threads and escaping polyester as the greatest decorations possible, as a Medal of Honor, for making it through the most trying of times. It was a smile that radiated his unwavering spirit against all odds. It was a smile that belonged to a true Olympian. I had given up on him years and years ago, but Bear never gave up on himself years and years later.

As the renovated Bear sits on my shelf, next to an ID card, a mirror, and a large album of photos throughout the years, his constantly-smiling face reminds me to never lose faith, to persevere even through the bleakest of scenarios, to remember that there’s always calm after the storm. Bear promises me this storm truly will pass.

I return his smile. I believe him.