I think the nicest thing my Grandma Augusta ever did for me was to agree to buy Henry.
I was visiting her in Florida for my 3rd grade winter vacation and, as usual, she was dragging me shopping for clothes because what I was wearing wasn't good enough. We passed a circular display of small stuffed animals and I saw this tiny, tannish, sweet and vulnerable little dog.
I'm not sure what attracted me so much to Henry. I think I must have identified with him somehow. I had always been one of the smallest girls in my class and, looking back, this was probably right around the time that my parents were getting divorced... I think I liked the feeling that I could protect Henry, that I was so much bigger than him. I understood where he was coming from. Above all other stuffed animals, I felt that Henry & I shared a certain connection.
When I got a little older, I decided at some point that Henry actually had to be a girl-dog because he didn't have a penis, and his eyelashes just seemed so long and girly. For a little while, I was upset that he had been misnamed and misunderstood for so long. But then I decided that the name Henry was actually short for Henrietta, and that made me feel a lot better. Some time later, I stopped caring about it at all, and Henry long ago reverted back to his maleness.
Henry's traveled with me to lots of different places. For a few months in 3rd grade, he accompanied me to school and back every day. He came to sleepaway camp every summer for six years, and then branched out with me to tennis camp, a teen tour and a high school trip to France.
Of course he came with me to college. And of course he still lives with me in my apartment, enduring my ups and downs, getting lost in my mess and eventually resurfacing.
