Very Sincerely Yours

by Kerry Winfrey

“It would be actually impossible for you to bother us, Teddy,” said Kirsten. “You’re like one of those weird little animals you see in a viral video where people think it’s a stuffed animal because it’s so cute but then actually it’s a real chipmunk or whatever.”

It couldn’t be easy to have the personality of a precocious kid on a sitcom when you were in school in the real world.

Teddy didn’t believe in guilty pleasures as a concept. She figured if you liked something, whether it was the Taco Bell Crunchwrap Supreme or the music of boy bands from the late nineties (okay, so those were both examples from Teddy’s life), why feel guilty about it? The world was a tough, cruel place. Why not find joy wherever you could, grab that joy by the metaphorical joy reins, and hold on tight?

Or maybe it was the way he managed to maintain a conversation with a puppet while responding to a heartfelt letter from a child, which could’ve been an extremely specific version of the “get you a man who can do both” meme tailor-made for Teddy.

“But maybe—and this is kinda cool to think about—your thing is out there waiting for you. Maybe your thing is fencing, or singing, or playing the flute. But you won’t know unless you try, right? So that’s my advice for you, Keegan. Try everything you can. Even—or maybe especially—the things that scare you. Keep your mind and your heart open and be on the lookout, and I know you’ll find your thing.”

“You know how many times I’ve started my life completely over? This is the fun part, sweetie. This is the part where you get to decide what’s next, so it’s up to you: what are you going to do now?”

And so Everett’s first memory wasn’t of his own family but of identifying with Kermit the Frog, the sensible guy in a crew full of weirdos. Of Miss Piggy, a misunderstood diva who knew her worth, surrounded by people (or rather, puppets) who needed to get on her level. Of Fozzie Bear telling jokes that Everett would try and fail to tell his friends when he got older. Of Gonzo and his bizarre, frantic energy and semiperverse love of chickens.

When he watched the Pigs in Space get into another scrape, Everett laughed, but he also felt a sense of raw possibility. A sense of the potential in fabric and imagination. Those puppets could communicate feelings to both children and adults in a way that never felt condescending. That’s what I want to do, Everett thought, and that desire held steady throughout his entire childhood.

“Not to be a gender essentialist, but I don’t think men care about throw pillows. They’re content to live in throw-pillow-less squalor.”

They discovered that even if they didn’t have much in common other than the music and the dresses, they were deeply in friend love with one another.

“Sweetie,” Eleanor said, “you don’t have to pay us back by making us food. That’s not how this works. I don’t know what Richard did to make you believe you had to earn his affection, but that’s not the way real relationships work, whether they’re romantic or friendship.”

Someday, she’d be able to do whatever she wanted. The thought filled her with a happy sort of anxiousness, a bubble in her stomach that rose to her heart and made her feel like she was flying.

Children couldn’t lie to preserve someone else’s dignity the way adults did, and that authenticity pushed Everett to work harder.

Sometimes it helps to think back to what made us happy when we were young, before we met people who told us our dreams were silly or unrealistic. What lit up your heart when you were a kid? Maybe that’s your thing.

“Okay, I get it. You don’t like Richard.” Josie widened her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t like him. It’s that I want to drop him into a volcano.”

Theodora, take it from me, someone who might, in fact, be a bad person and/or a robot who doesn’t know how to fully love: you’re not damaged goods. You’re not a reject. I don’t even know you, and I know you’re an incredibly special person who is willing to take a chance to make her life better. Not everyone can do that. That takes guts.

Teddy read the email once, twice, and then a third time. She had the sudden urge to clutch her laptop to her chest, like she was a woman holding a wartime soldier’s letter in an old movie.

Everett St. James was in touch with his feelings, and it was extremely hot.

Because this was the core belief of his show, of his work, of his life: children deserved respect. They deserved to be listened to, believed, and accepted. All children deserved the space and time to explore their interests, hobbies, and passions, and he was unfortunately aware that there were so many well-meaning adults in the world who could crunch a child’s self-esteem under their heel without even knowing it.

A feeling, even as he watched her smile at Gretel from across the room, that he knew her somehow. A feeling of comfort. Of home.

“Gretel! Where did you come from? Where did you go?” Everett was so relieved to hear her that he didn’t even stop to acknowledge that he’d quoted the song “Cotton Eye Joe.”

“How can she be the woman of your dreams when she never guest-starred on The Muppet Show and sang a duet with Kermit the Frog?” Gretel asked dryly. “I have other dream women!” Everett snapped. “Go get your food!”

Everett smiled, and Teddy’s heart broke into a million pieces that she’d have to sweep up off the shop floor later.

The second his lips touched hers, she knew all of her worries were meaningless. This was the free fall after jumping out of the airplane, the feeling of floating, floating, floating through the clouds. Everett placed a hand on her cheek, so softly, and Teddy felt like she was something fragile and special, something that deserved to be looked at and displayed instead of hidden away.

“Shush. Let the man emote. We need to encourage straight men to share their feelings; that would solve, like, ninety percent of the world’s problems.”

Today, she was a straight shot of one feeling and one feeling only: she was completely and utterly smitten.

She couldn’t miss the way his eyes changed when they were on her; they were softer and brighter in a way that made her entire body feel warm and cold at the same time. She blushed.

The world was full of sad, heartbroken, and lonely people. Pain was everywhere. But at that moment, as Christmas music played in November and Everett St. James smiled at her, Teddy didn’t feel even the slightest bit sad, heartbroken, or lonely. She felt happy and hopeful and whole.

Everett on TV was the same person as Everett in real life, because Everett only knew how to be himself.

Everett threw his head back and laughed, that unselfconscious, unbridled laugh that made Teddy’s whole body shimmer like a disco ball.

Everett kissed her, holding her face in both his hands. “Teddy, will you do me the honor of being my girlfriend and accepting all responsibilities contained therein, including but not limited to (a) spending time with me and (b) that’s pretty much it?”

“I can’t be the girl for someone else. I have to be my own girl.”

When it’s really love, you don’t have to lose yourself. Falling in love should make you more yourself.”

That’s just what life is. Even if you’re happy with the path you went down, part of you always wonders what was on that other road you passed a few miles back. That doesn’t mean it’s some grand tragedy. But it’s a loss all the same.”

“Love doesn’t conquer all. But when it’s real, when both of you feel it, it can conquer a whole hell of a lot.”

Maybe she wouldn’t ever find one big thing that lit her up; maybe it was enough to be constantly discovering a million little things that made life worth living.

Loving someone and being loved back, getting the chance to wake up every morning and uncover new passions, deciding on her own what her life would be . . . It was more than enough. It was everything.