Mr. Bim is Home

Growing up in the projects of Little Rock, Arkansas, Karin had very, very little to call her own. For a kid with one mom, four sisters and bad memories of a dad they fled from one scary night a while back, toys were a luxury, and mostly not something pulled out of a shiny package from the five and dime.

One thing Karin did have was a little stuffed monkey named Mr. Bim. He meant everything to Karin, and her little world crashed around her one day when she forgot him at the playground. She and her sisters ran back within minutes of leaving Mr. Bim alone on the swing set, but he was gone. And none of the neighbors who answered their knocks could tell them the whereabouts of the little monkey with the plastic banana in his hand.

It’s odd how moments of deep sadness embed themselves in the quiet corners of our hearts and sit there, undisturbed but not intentionally avoided, until one random day, years later, a memory stirs. We mention the event in passing to a friend or lover, then shuffle on with the business of life and chalk up the memory as one of those things that just happens in the course of growing up.

Forty-something years later, Karin thought about Mr. Bim one day over the rim of a coffee cup. She told her husband her tale of childhood woe. I don’t know if Jim laughed or smiled or just commiserated with her loss. But she shuffled on with her business of life. That was a few weeks ago.

Now mornings are a quiet affair for Karin. Jim wakes first, makes the coffee, and has the decency to limit speech until Karin’s share has worked it’s magic. (Good man.) This morning, he made the coffee and headed out for the day.

Karin woke and found her way to the kitchen. She found a mug and she found the coffee warming in the pot. And then she found Mr. Bim, sitting next to the pot, a plastic banana in one hand and a note in the other that read, “Hi Karin. I'm back! I've been looking for you for years!”

That sad memory hiding in the quiet corner of Karin’s heart was dragged out and transformed into a deep, rich story of childlike joy and redemption and reunion and all the other good things you feel when you realize that God cares enough about you to remember the things that made you sad, even when you didn’t. Her husband found this Mr. Bim on eBay and it was the only Mr. Bim on eBay. (I checked this afternoon.) I think that God had his mind on that little monkey all along, knowing the day the collector would put it up for sale so Jim could find it so Karin would know how much he loves her. And she could experience how deeply God loves her.

Most of Karin’s morning was spent in tears, on the phone with her mother and sisters, reliving memories of Mr. Bim and then all the other good memories that they shared. She’ll keep the little monkey close to home and always near her heart. And she’ll smile every time she thinks about finding him next to the coffee pot, like he’d always intended to find his way home.