Caroll Spinney with Big Bird, his largest creation.
AP
One of my earliest memories as a child is being sucked through a clear plastic tube – a la those pneumatic tubes that bank drive-ups use – and zipped through a hospital, naked and exposed for all of the world to see while I screamed at the top of my lungs for someone to let me out.
Scratch that. One of my earliest NIGHTMARES as a child – one that continued to haunt me well into adulthood – was the result of being alone in a children’s hospital, my parents unable to be there all day, every day, with solo trips to CT scans and MRI machines leaving me with a lifelong fear of confined spaces and surly nurses.
It was a scary time for me, and it left a deep mark I still can’t entirely shake.
But there was one bright light. It was yellow, covered in soft feathers, and gifted to me by my big brother, who was visibly holding back tears as he gave it to me to keep me safe at the hospital.
It was a Big Bird doll in honor of my favorite Sesame Street character (the fact that he became my hospital buddy made me love him all the more). I have vague recollections of talking to him, and him to me, my little brain processing all the lessons I’d learned from the show and applying them to my new, terrifying world.
I remember, too, when my family moved a few years later, and that doll was somehow lost in the shuffle. Whether my parents donated him or tossed him and thought I wouldn’t notice or we just never unpacked that box, I don’t know, but I remember feeling so sad, so alone, when I couldn’t find him.
I felt a little like that today when I heard about Caroll Spinney’s passing. It’s so strange how the death of a celebrity – of someone we’ve never met but feel like we know – hits us in the gut. And though I’m sure Big Bird will continue to live on, this is the end of an era. Time is passing. Lives are passing.
And I find myself wishing, perhaps now more than ever, that I had something – anything – to bring me that same level of solace I once found in a tiny Big Bird doll.