Our Polar Bear

There’s a polar bear in my closet.

A statue of a polar bear, that is, with its neck outstretched, its head twisted slightly in a quizzical look.

It’s a 10-pound statue of a polar bear. But it’s also my friend Josh.

Josh gave me the statue about 25 years ago. And both he and it have remained in my life since, each becoming a quiet but dear presence. Josh and his polar bear also have taught me unexpected lessons about self-acceptance and about persistence as a pal.

Let’s start with the polar bear. The thing is clumsy. Standing about 8 inches high and running about 15 inches long, the bear perches on top of the short dresser in my closet. And it’s often in my way. Even though it occupies the edge of the dresser top, the polar bear makes it harder to stack clothes on the dresser en route to putting them away. And since it is at the edge, I worry that it will tip over into the adjacent wall, making a mark and wearing down its own battered white coat.

I feel stupid, in a way, for having it there.

And that same sense of some shame goes back to the bear’s origins in my life. Josh gave it to me one day during our sophomore year in college. He said it reminded him of me. That made a certain sense. I was always asking questions--as this polar bear appeared to be doing. I stood out from Josh and our other two roommates for voicing many more questions than they did. Josh especially. He rarely articulated questions. He read voraciously but he was quiet. Inscrutable even.

He found my constant querries amusing. But I couldn’t tell if he was laughing with or at me. And so I could feel stupid around him. Did he appreciate my curiosity or look down on me as a rube? The polar bear gift neatly captured my confusion. Was it a sweet-hearted present or a mocking jab? Maybe a little of both?

If you would have asked me to predict which of my college friends I would have remained close to, Josh wouldn’t have made the short list. To get a sense of how I felt uncomfortable around him, take music. I considered myself to be open minded about music entering college. I had ventured, for example, into alternative, New Wave groups in high school when most of my friends were focused on classic, more mainstream rockers like The Who, Bruce Springsteen and The Police. I dug The Style Council. But Josh was way more alternative than me, and I felt him looking down on much of my music. To him, the Style Council was a travesty.

We just didn’t get each other on some level. I thought I was doing my sophomore roommates a favor one time by tidying up our bug-infested living room. Inadvertently, I tossed out some of Josh's “fanzines,” homemade newsletters central to the underground music scene before the Internet. Josh blew up at me when he found out. “I can’t believe you did that,” he screamed. My trash, his counter-cultural treasure.

Because of these differences and my discomfort, I distanced myself from Josh. I chose not to room with him junior year. We headed into different “eating clubs” at Princeton, the places where upperclass students eat and socialize. My senior year we grew even farther apart. I became a resident advisor living in an underclass student dorm, while he graduated early, moved into an apartment in town and took a job as a policy analyst.

Still, Josh and I maintained a kind of remote friendship. We never lived together again, but always stayed in touch. Eating together among friends at our eating clubs or his Princeton apartment. Seeing music acts every once in a while, like Prince’s Lovesexy tour in Philly in 1989. Going en masse to his parents’ farmhouse home in Pennsylvania.

The pattern continued after I graduated. He was a regular visitor at the Brooklyn apartment where a bunch of college friends and I flopped after graduating. The four of us sophomore roommates took an epic 6-week trip to Southeast Asia. And after I moved out to San Francisco and Josh settled in Brooklyn, we continued to look each other up on trips—meaning we saw each other about once a year. Through visits, email and ultimately Facebook, we have remained in each other’s lives.

It’s the same with the polar bear. I don’t quite know why, but it has persevered over the years. For a significant stretch, I think it sat in the dark confines of an old suitcase in a storage room. Even when it surfaced, I haven’t always known what to do with it. It’s been placed on the floor, where it got in the way, and on a desk, where it took up too much space. But I’ve never thrown it out.

And I’m glad I haven’t. For one thing, it proved useful when I rehabilitated a dislocated shoulder. I used it as a weight in my exercises.

But other knick-knacks collected over the years have played practical roles and haven’t made the cuts of multiple spring cleanings and home rearranging. Why has this statue of an endangered species survived as a personal item of mine?

I suspect the secret is that the polar bear is a mirror to me. Its expression captures a curiosity that I identify with at my core. I’m not sure I always valued that quality, especially when I occasionally felt foolish for asking a “dumb” question. But as I became a teacher and later a writer, I came to treasure inquisitiveness as one of my greatest strengths. A trait I’m trying to pass on to my kids, a key to world peace even.

This polar bear may be bulky, may trigger memories of mixed emotions, may have almost ended up in a landfill.

But it’s next to me now because it reminds me of my best self.

Like his bear, Josh also has come to occupy an important corner of my life. It started in college, when Josh helped teach me the importance of doing my homework. One time he and I attended a rally calling on Princeton to divest itself of investments tied to apartheid South Africa. A counter protester approached us and asked if we were sure the black citizens of South Africa really wanted international companies to pull out of the country. I didn’t know the answer to that question—I was there out of a vague sense that apartheid was wrong. But Josh knew the facts cold. He cited evidence that South African blacks backed divestment.

And even though I chafed against what I saw as his music snobbery, Josh has introduced me to some of the most important songs in my life. I might never have heard of Joan Armatrading, The Feelies or Big Star if not for him. But Armatrading’s “My Family” always renews my hope for humanity, The Feelies’ “Let’s Go” always raves me up and Big Star’s three albums remain among my all-time favorites. Big Star’s “Watch the Sunrise” has helped carry me through trying times, including the break-up of my first marriage.

In other ways, Josh has multiplied joys and mitigated pains. He invited me to go skiing in Utah when my first wife and I were on the verge of breaking up. He came to both my first and second weddings. I remember hugging him and our other college roommate Raul on the top of San Francisco’s Tank Hill at the close of the second one—tears of relief and happiness flowing and Josh able to appreciate those as well as anyone. I came to his Brooklyn home weeks after his first child Gus was born, my own son Julius mere months older. And for nearly a decade now we have continued to connect on the highs, lows and quirks of parenting.

Josh deserves more credit for the way the signal of our connection hasn’t weakened over the years. He has been the more likely to interrupt the silence between us with an email or Facebook message, often passing on news about mutual friends and asking what’s up with me. My trips back East grew less frequent, but Josh gets to the Bay Area every year to visit his parents-in-law in Orinda. He faithfully makes plans to get together.

I got a glimpse into his dogged nature at his wedding some 10 years ago. It was a blast of a nuptial gathering, a multiday affair at a family compound in Maine full of waterskiing, badminton, a campfire and Scottish dancing lessons. At one point, I told his mother that I was glad Josh hadn’t given up on me as a friend. “He’s loyal,” she explained.

I’m glad he is. And I’m glad I’ve been loyal in my way as well. Even today, I still have to overcome a hint of my old anxiety around him when we communicate. But I do. And I made sure to contribute to his 40th birthday video—one of those profile movies full of interviews with friends and old photos panned over in Ken Burns-fashion. I spoke about one of my favorite Josh stories. The time during our Southeast Asia trip when Josh, man of esoteric music, chose to sing the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” during a boozy evening of karaoke near the Borobudor Buddhist shrine. He belted out this rock classic with feeling.

That was a sign that it wasn’t entirely fair to see Josh as a music snob. I think any such snobbery in him has softened over the years. And in any event, another friend appearing in Josh's video helped me see his musical tastes in a different light. Eric Weisbard, a pop culture scholar and fan of eclectic music himself, recounted that Josh would listen to albums Eric and his wife, music critic Ann Powers, couldn’t bear to hear. Josh's attitude toward those far-out bands was fundamentally a generous one, Eric said. Josh gave them a chance.

Viewing others as worthy of attention--as likely to contain a compelling story or song--amounts to curiosity. Seeing Josh as a quieter kind of curious has reinforced my own version of wondering about the world.

In the end, Josh and I are bears of the same fur. We’re both that statue sitting in my closet.