A little brown teddy bear’s world changes when it is borrowed… lost and then found, found and found again. Teddy bear loving little girls, an older Syrian refugee boy in Miami are all tested by teddy matters as is the unscrupulous local TV news reporter, Diane Saddlebags. This teddy matters to many people and with each person the little brown teddy finds itself lost in a world of adventures. A teeny weeny short story.

Lost & Found

Miami International Airport's Lost & Found facility's location and hours of operation are as follows:

For information on lost and found items call: 305-876-7377. Hours: 8:00am to 6:00pm daily (365 days a year).  Location: level 4.

But for thirty days plus nobody came. Not the little five year old girl from whose sleepy arms the teddy bear slipped when she was carried off the airplane by her harried mother, nor her mother or anyone else for that matter. It sat unclaimed but admired by staff on a shelf sandwiched between a brightly multi-coloured nylon rucksack named ‘Mabel’ (it had a label saying ‘if found please return to Mabel’, but nothing more) and a vintage blue Jantzen one-piece swimsuit.

The staff in Lost & Found to the side of the terminal’s bustling concourse would often pick up the teddy and give it a squeeze. They would study its brief paperwork hoping that some new clue would be there that would help them reunite it with its owner. The information that accompanied the teddy was minimal. It noted the airline and flight that it was handed over to from American Airlines and the airport of origin of that flight; New York’s JFK. So thirty plus days later they were none the wiser. One thing they all eventually noticed that they hadn’t at first, the teddy had a tiny, pretty blue-coloured rhinestone attached to the inside upper fold of one of its ears.  The day they discovered that glimmering stone they began to refer to the teddy as ‘Lonely Sapphire’.

So every day was the same. The teddy sat on that shelf between Mabel and the rolled up blue Jantzen swimsuit with their little dockets of identifying paperwork. The staff would come along every few days to where they rested unwanted and unclaimed and push another lost object onto the shelf so the items would all bunch up closer. More luridly coloured rucksacks would join them along with sunglasses, baby bottles, hats, umbrellas, walking sticks, wallets, foam neck rests and even more stuffed toys.  Every time one of the clerks in Lost & Found completed an item’s paperwork and placed it on the shelf they would stop and admire the teddy, pick it up, squeeze it, run their hands over its soft brown curly teddy bear fur and say, “You’d think somebody would be missing Lonely Sapphire by now wouldn’t you? What a shame.” and they would gently push the teddy back in between its forgotten shelf mates. 

One day Mabel was found, re-claimed by the family who owned her. Now the teddy and the blue Jantzen swimsuit kept each other company. They were perhaps the longest guests on the Lost & Found shelf they occupied in the depot. Neither could know what was to become of them. After thirty days arrangements are made for items, these long-left items. Few really know what those ‘arrangements’ might really be. The staff couldn’t readily lay personal claim to these left things, retrieved from airline seats and from nooks and crannies of the vast areas of the airport itself.

A few days passed since Mabel had vacated the shelf leaving a bit of room for the other items to spread out, but not for long. More abandoned and overlooked things were brought in; a long blonde wig, a snorkel, yet more children’s ruck sacks and stuffed toys, glass eyeballs and one morning a faux fur bedspread (!). Lost & Found was an amazing place.

A woman stepped into the office one day. She was an older lady, tanned, sophisticated and somewhat embarrassed. She’d come for the blue Jantzen. The swimsuit was removed from the teddy’s side along with its little bit of paperwork and taken to the counter and presented to the lady. A few questions were asked of her about the circumstance of the lost blue Jantzen.

“It would appear this swimming costume slipped out of my carry-on luggage on my Jet Blue flight from St. Maarten to Miami. How I don’t know but I’m so glad it was found and turned into you.” the woman said in a breathy relieved voice, “I looked everywhere for it and frankly I was resigned to the fact that it was now gone for good until it was suggested by a friend only recently that I contact you here at Lost & Found et voila!” she beamed and held out her blue Jantzen letting it unfurl and inspecting it.

“May I ask,” ventured the counter clerk as she entered signing off information into the computer, “just how ‘vintage’ is that swimsuit?”

“Oh my dear,” the woman answered, “I was given it when I was just a girl by an aunt before Santa Claus could even have grown his white beard! In a few years it will go from vintage to positively antique I should imagine! Thank you for taking care of it. I’ve lost this before a very, very, very long time ago and I don’t intend on letting it from my sight again. ”

“Not at all. It’s spent its time here with us next to that lonely teddy on that shelf.” the clerk chuckled and drew the woman’s attention to where the swimsuit had spent over a month.

“Oh my, what a lovely little fellow that is. May I see it?” the woman asked gazing behind the clerk at the teddy.

“Well, okay. I suppose you can have a look at Lonely Sapphire.”

“Lonely Sapphire?”

“That’s what we call the teddy. Lonely Sapphire,” the clerk said turning and stepping over to the shelf areas, “on account that it’s probably the longest left item we have here now that you’ve claimed your ‘swimming costume’?”

The clerk handed the teddy to the woman. She accepted it with a gentle curiosity. She turned it around inspecting it much like she had done her beloved swimsuit.

“Oh it is so charming.” she stated and held the teddy’s soft brown furry body close to her cheek. She cuddled it and then held it away to study its face. She smiled at its light beige snout and little toffee coloured nose. “But you can’t see its eyes.”

She moved the teddy’s curling fur above its snout to reveal two dark brown, hard plastic eyes with deep polished glints. There was a tag the colour of the teddy’s snout on its brown furry bum that read ‘Gund (with a registered trademark symbol), Bradley, The Borders Bear TM, 46100.’     

“Well. This teddy was once from a book store someplace.” the woman suggested.

“According to our paperwork we know that it arrived on an American Airlines flight from New York and that’s about it.” the clerk offered as she too peered at the little label.

“Do you think it will ever find a home?” the woman asked with quiet concern. A sad tone fell across the counter between her and the clerk. She inspected the teddy’s ears and discovered the little blue stone. “What’s this?”

“Oh. That’s why we call it Lonely Sapphire, because of that pretty little blue rhinestone. ‘Lonely Rhinestone’ doesn’t have the same romance to it does it?” the clerk replied and made to accept the teddy back from the woman.

“What will happen to it if nobody claims it?” the woman asked handing it over.

“Well, any number of things I suppose. But we’d hate for it to be discarded and destroyed.”

  “Oh, I do love beautiful things.” the woman declared wistfully resting a last gaze on the teddy, “If you said I could leave with it today I would be sorely tempted. But I haven’t any grandchildren to give this little bear to more is the shame.”

The woman said goodbye to the teddy and the clerk at Miami International’s Lost & Found hoping it would find its rightful home before someone realised the lonely little teddy bore a far greater value than Lost & Found knew. 

Penelope Andres

 The lights dimmed after the dinner service. Penelope Andres moved through the hushed cabin surveying the slumbering passengers in her section. They were mainly Americans and British on the flight from London’s Heathrow to New York’s JFK. The darkness of the cabin was interrupted here and there by the flickering screens of some who, still awake, watched one or another of the myriad of inflight movies on their screens.  She approached the pair quietly, the mother and her young child, and stopped at their row. She gently opened the overhead compartment and moved a few things about surreptitiously but all the while gauging just how deeply her two passengers slept. Closing the overhead silently she then leant in over the female passenger, adjusted the blanket covering the toddler in the window seat and removed the little brown teddy bear that was loosely cradled in the girl’s arm. Five rows back the teddy was deposited in an empty aisle seat. A man carrying a leather toilet bag rose from his seat. He approached the teddy, picked it up and made his way towards one of the aircraft’s toilets. He looked back over his shoulder to make sure he wasn’t being watched by anyone. He opened the door and stepped inside. He placed the teddy on the metal topped surface next to the minute washbasin. He removed a valuable Jammu Kashmir sapphire set in a platinum mount from an opened packet of chewy fruit sweets. From his toilet bag he produced a needle and thread and began to sew the precious stone onto the teddy, tucked up under the fold of one of its ears.   

“Ma’am?” Penelope Andres asked quietly touching the slowly awakening woman on her shoulder, “We are serving breakfast now. Would you care for anything for you and your little girl?”

Barbara Barnes opened her eyes having forgotten where she was and looked anxiously to her right for her daughter Tilly. The child was still fast asleep, her head resting on her teddy which was lodged under her against the armrest.

“Oh my. Yes. Of course that would be lovely.” Barbara Barnes replied raising herself up against the back of her seat. She made to rouse her daughter.

 “Can I take her little friend for you to make a bit more room?” Penelope Andres offered and leant in removing the teddy and placing him gently into the overhead above their row, “He’s right in here for when you need him unless he’s hungry too?” she smiled at the muzzy face of the wakening child who had little idea what was being said.

“Thank you miss,” Barbara Barnes answered, a smile and turned to her daughter who was trying to sit upright, “I think teddy is still wanting some sleep, don’t you Tilly?”

Customs and immigration was not as congested as it can sometimes be when Barbara Barnes and her daughter went through the quick process of the USA Citizen’s channel. Their documents were briefly looked at. They proceeded to the luggage carousel hall and onto the customs channels.

“Ah, you dropped this miss.” a man said to Tilly as he swiped the teddy up off the tiled floor and appeared at Barbara Barnes’ side momentarily. The long night flight was tiring. Shortly too she would have to deal with their transfer to the connecting flight to Miami and Barbara Barnes was beginning to frazzle. She was feeling slightly agitated to be honest but with a thankful smile she took the teddy from the stranger’s hand, placed it on top of her own hand luggage, nodded without a word at the man and kept moving. With nothing to declare, mother and daughter passed through customs. They negotiated their way to the American Airlines domestic bag re-check all the while unaware that the gentleman in the camel coat, who picked the teddy up from the floor, followed closely behind keeping his eye on the pair.

Barbara and Tilly Barnes settled in their seats. A few rows behind them so did the gentleman in the camel coat. When he walked forward to the toilets passing them during the flight down the coast he went unnoticed by Barbara Barnes but Tilly recognised him. He had picked up teddy for her when she had dropped him. She smiled at him when he returned from the toilets but he looked down briefly only at the teddy as he kept walking. When the aircraft finally came to a stop at the arrival gate the aisles filled with masses of passengers who were far more energetic than Barbara Barnes, who was flagging from the long journey through the night. One extremely large lady in the row behind stood and easily filled the aisle making a commotion as she retrieved bags from the overhead compartment and doled them out to what seemed to be her five or six equally large children. This blockage in the aisle was so long and protracted that Barbara Barnes, bags over one shoulder and a sleepy Tilly slumped over the other, was gone and off the aircraft many minutes before the gentleman in the camel coat could manage. He lost sight of them and wouldn’t have seen the teddy slip from Tilly’s loose hold, fall to the cabin floor and get kicked under the seats and out of sight by the large lady’s feet. And so the teddy, once found by cabin cleaners, came to sit with his friends Mabel and the blue Jantzen on the shelf at Miami International’s Lost & Found.

Tilly didn’t wake until she and her mother pulled up their drive-way in Coconut Grove and even then neither realised that teddy was gone. Tilly didn’t ask for her teddy until her mother wearily tucked her into bed early that evening. In her frazzled memory she’d decided it was lost at JFK. That’s where she started and ended her search; JFK’s Lost & Found. When their home was burgled the very next day and nothing was taken the police were baffled.

Barbara Barnes was crestfallen when she discovered that Borders the booksellers who sold ‘Bradley’ the bear had long since closed nationwide and the little brown teddy was truly irreplaceable. Tilly was bought a new honey coloured teddy but the little brown one was deeply missed. He had been hers since she could remember. They were almost inseparable. The brown teddy travelled with her everywhere. Even to Great Britain where they both saw Buckingham Palace (which was a real palace), Piccadilly Circus (which wasn’t a circus at all), Hyde Park and Harrods the big shop, which incidentally was full of its own English teddies. But not as loving as her own, now lost.

“Life is full of disappointments and loss.” Barbara Barnes told her little girl for the first time.

“And teddy bears?” Tilly asked with a tiny curious curl in her voice.

“Yes dear. Life is full of teddy bears. ” Barbara Barnes reassured her pensive daughter. Tilly looked at her new honey coloured teddy bear and gave it a fresh and affectionate hug.

Weeks later Barbara Barnes, on a whim, decided to try Miami International Lost & Found but she was still unsure that the teddy even made it onto the Miami flight that morning of their return. Both Lost & Found and Barbara Barnes were further upset when she telephoned because the brown teddy that had been there for the longest time had now sadly had been disposed of.

“Disposed of?” Tilly’s mother repeated down the line to the clerk.

“I’m afraid so. We did keep it for quite some time. Our information shows that it was donated along with a number of children’s toys to a charity for refugee children. I’m very sorry.”

Tilly had stopped asking after the teddy. He was a fading from her memory so Barbara Barnes thanked the clerk, ending the call and ending the search for Tilly’s teddy.