Finding Charlie

Charlie lay across the table from me, out of reach, but only a few inches from my best friend Nancy Craig. He was only partially hidden by a tiny blanket of plaid cotton material, and I knew that if Mrs. Green saw him she'd take him and keep him.

Yesterday I removed the computer manuals crammed between my monitor and fax machine and searched the house to find some trinkets to make my desk feel more lively and fun. "Choose an artist totem," I had read in Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, "A doll, a stuffed animal, a carved figure…something you feel a protective fondness toward." Giving it a place of honor, she says, will help my writer's creativity flow. I immediately remembered a little rubbery anteater the size of my thumbnail that I'd played with in seventh grade.

I'd named him Charlie and he lived in my sewing drawer in Home Ec class, in a bed of cloth scraps, nestled in among spools of thread and packages of needles. His long tubular nose arched upward and his two pinpoint black eyes stared up from the top of his flat head. He wore painted-on clothing: black boots, blue pants and a red shirt with a yellow boutonniere. When Mrs. Green, the Home Ec teacher, lectured with her back to our table of four girls, I brought him out to dance on the tabletop stage, and when she turned around again, I tossed him into my drawer. There I'd hold him, waiting for his next appearance.

One day Mrs. Green caught sight of the four of us laughing at something and stalked over to our table. She pulled my drawer out and dumped it over in the middle of the table, scattering sewing materials to its edges. Charlie lay across the table from me, out of reach, but only a few inches from my best friend Nancy Craig. He was only partially hidden by a tiny blanket of plaid cotton material, and I knew that if Mrs. Green saw him she'd take him and keep him.

While Mrs. Green rummaged roughly through the contents of my drawer, Nancy folded her arms in front of her and set them on the table. Slowly she slid her hand toward Charlie, smoothly cupped it over him and almost imperceptibly slid it back. Mrs. Green, not finding him, let out an exasperated groan and said, "Put your things back in your drawer and be quiet." Behind Mrs. Green's back, Nancy tossed Charlie to me and we smiled at each other.

All this came back to me when Julia Cameron suggested that I encourage my inner artist-child by decorating my workspace. I had kept Charlie for many years, moving him along with me all the times I'd packed up and changed cities. If I could find him, I would talk to him when my writing didn't flow. He would remind me of a more playful and brave me and inspire me to recapture those feelings in my writing.

This morning I rummaged through the boxes in the closet where I keep my scrapbooks, childhood photos, and coin collection. No Charlie. I looked in a black enamel box on top of my bureau, which holds spare buttons for all the blouses I've bought over the last ten years. No Charlie. I could think of only one more place that he might be, but I was beginning to doubt I would find him at all. Perhaps I had tossed him during one of my last moves.

But at the bottom of my jewelry box, underneath a tangled mound of pins and necklaces, I found him. He was lying on his side waiting patiently for me to pull him out again after all these years. I smiled, standing there in my bedroom turning him over in my hands.

Now I've super-glued him to the top of my monitor where he stands at attention and makes me smile when I glance in his direction. I've found an old friend. And I've been typing away like mad ever since.

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©2001 Kathy Briccetti