Honk and Nessa

From early in our relationship, Heather and I noticed certain affinities in common. We met on account of working for the same summer program. We had our first real and personal talk on account of her playing my favorite Indigo Girls song in her office one day. We found that we both have a love of Muppets that is rooted in childhood. We enjoy beaches and travel and gringo-style tacos.

And childish things.

We started long distance. I would visit her home in San Diego, where I discovered Nessa--a Cabbage Patch doll from Heather’s childhood. One of the few possessions she had the chance to hold onto across many-a-move as a child, and even more moves as an adult. She treasured Nessa. Had both taken pains to keep her in good condition, but also still slept cradling Nessa in her arms as often as not.

Heather would come to my apartment in Baltimore, and she discovered Honk. A My Pet Monster whose impractically heavy plastic nose had long ago broken from his face, so that his inner white stuffing burgeoned to the surface. Propped on his feet, Honk stands about two and a half feet tall. I had had him since he stood chest-high on me--an oversized inanimate buddy who I had sat beside in my first attempts at writing stories back in elementary school, and who had bodyslammed on my bed in any number of pro wrestling fantasies.

Heather and I talk about having children, and, more immediately, about adopting cats. In the meantime, Honk and Nessa have functioned something like surrogates. I put them together on a mini-papasan chair when we first moved in together. Heather worried that Nessa looked scared of the monster beside her. Later, I posited that they looked as though they were on a date with each other--telling one another stories, their upward gaze representative of them looking at the stars, muddling through the faintest, most abstract knowledge of what constellations might await them.

Heather always says hello to Nessa and Honk when she comes back from trips, and a number of times I've welcomed her home with comic drawings of what they were up to while she was away.

We’re careful never to cover their faces when we drape dirty clothes over the papasan. We want to make sure they can breathe.

For all of this silliness and play, I think the heart of our care for this inanimate pair has less to do with indulging childhood play than an extension of who Heather and I are--a drive to externalize our community of two, and to share more pieces of who each of us once were with each other. To pretend that Honk and Nessa are as excited to be with each other, and with us, as we are to have them near.