“Yes.” Cheyenne pointed to her nose and at me as I answered.
My mom had a very unique sense of style that was decade specific. She was ride or die ’80s. Side ponytails, leg warmers, bright clothing, and shoulder pads. It didn’t matter what contemporary fashion was, she represented the ’80s.
For her birthday I’d gotten her a collector’s edition, vintage Swatch watch that she’d had her eye on for a few years. I’d planned on mailing it to her but was glad that I’d be able to give it to her in person.
“She was a nurse, right?”
“Yep. She’s retired now, but she was.”
“Oh my gosh, I just remembered one time that I had to get my blood taken, and I was terrified. She gave me this…I think it was a teddy bear…”
“Fozzie.”
“Yes!” She clapped her hands excitedly. “Fozzie.”
“He was my bear. I named him that because I loved Sesame Street.”
“It was yours?”
“Yep. I was at the office, I must’ve been around five, with my mom one day and a kid was upset about having to get a shot for something and I asked if he wanted to hold Fozzie. He did and as soon as the bear was in his arms, the boy calmed down. When he left my mom told me that she was going to buy a stuffed animal for the office that she could share with the children who were upset. I told her that I didn’t want her to get a new one, that I would leave Fozzie there.”
“Why?”
“Because Fozzie was special and another stuffed bear wouldn’t work.”
“Aww, that’s so sweet.”
“Believing that a stuffed toy was magic is sweet?”
“Yes, it is,” she stated firmly. “But I was awwing over how selfless you were, even at five.”
I glanced over at her and all I saw in her eyes was hero worship. That was the last thing I deserved. My shoulders lifted as anxiety spread through me like fog in the movie The Mist. My anxiety snuck up on me in such an insidious way.
One minute I was fine, and the next something would trigger it and it consumed me.
Perhaps sensing my change in demeanor, Cheyenne shifted the conversation. “When did your mom move away?”
“Right after my dad died. She said that she needed a fresh start.”
“And she lives up north, right? In a Christmas town?”
I’m sure that Cheyenne had heard people talk. Colleen Malone shacking up with a married man who lived up north in a Christmas town only a month after her husband passed away was still making the gossip circuit in Firefly six years after the fact, even though that wasn’t the case since Mitch was a widower.
“Is it North Pole?”
I couldn’t help but smile at her guess and I felt the dark fog of uneasiness begin to dissipate. Cheyenne was the only person I’d ever known that wielded that sort of power. When the darkness began to creep up in me, she neutralized it with a single question, or look, or touch.
“She moved to a town called Santa Claus,” I explained as my heart rate recovered from the adrenaline spike that always signaled an impending panic attack.
Cheyenne was my personal breathing technique and mindfulness tool wrapped in a perfect human package.
“Santa Claus? Wow. Does she love Christmas that much?”
“Her husband lived there.”
“Oh, Mitch, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”