“Please look after this bear. Thank you.”
— Michael Bond, A Bear Called Paddington.
Once upon a few days after Thanksgiving Fran and I were on one of our daily video calls. She mentioned the 2014 movie Paddington she was watching. She’d spent Thanksgiving on her own but had taken steps to make it special for herself, with movies and good food. I don’t think I’ve seen the film but I’ve always had a fondness for the bear from Darkest Peru. I told Fran about my earliest recollections of Paddington on the BBC children’s TV show Blue Peter. The stories’ author Michael Bond was a cameraman for the show. He wrote several Paddington Bear stories for the Blue Peter annuals which I remember receiving at Christmas throughout my childhood. Bond’s inspiration for the books was finding a small lonely-looking teddy bear on a shelf in the toy department of Selfridges store in London on Christmas Eve 1956. He brought the bear home as a gift for his wife. They named him Paddington after the train station closest to their home. The first Paddington book was published two years later.
The fact that Paddington was named for somewhere significant to his owners reminded me of Pemberton Bear. Fran knew who I meant but couldn’t remember how he came into my life. I fetched Pemberton from his place beside my bed and held him close through the rest of our video call. Pemberton is a grizzly bear stuffed toy I sewed when I lived in London in the eighties. The pattern and fur fabric were a gift from a colleague. (Thank you, Marjorie.) I presented Pemberton to a dear friend for Christmas 1984. He was much loved and often cuddled, moving from place to place with my friend over the next twenty years. He returned to me after her death in 2005.
Diary sketch of my friend’s room at 24 Pemberton Drive with Pemberton Bear on the bed. December 1984.
He’s named for 24 Pemberton Drive in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The house was the centre of my social and emotional world for several years. Many of my closest friends lived there at one point or another. I was a frequent visitor during my final years at university and occupied one of the attic rooms for a few months after graduating in 1983.
Clay model of 24 Pemberton Drive, Bradford.
Fran asked me to wait a moment. She returned with her bear. “This is Bubbs,” she told me, holding him up to the camera so that he and Pemberton could meet properly for the first time. I invited her to write a little about him for this blog post.
Ever since I can remember, I wanted a teddy bear. I never wanted a Barbie doll. I was more interested in G.I. Joes and race cars and their tracks. Santa never came until my late twenties when my ex-husband gifted me a GUND teddy bear. I named him Bubbs. I don’t know why but it suited him. Later my ex gifted me a golden retriever. I named him Bo. Bo became my soul mate. Both Bubbs and Bo had that dark rich golden fur. Bo is gone now but resides in an oak box. Our ashes will be scattered together in the ocean when my time comes. Bubbs sits in his own chair next to my bed. He is so good looking with his green bow and fits nicely cradled in my arms. His eyes are clear. His nose is worn, but I pencil it in with a sharpie. On Thanksgiving weekend I watched all three Paddington movies cuddled on the couch with Bubbs. Marty and I introduced Bubbs and Pemberton on Saturday night and the four of us had a grand time.
It’s noteworthy that neither Bubbs nor Pemberton was a childhood bear. Bubbs came to Fran when she was in her late twenties. My friend was twenty-two when Pemberton entered her life. I still have my childhood teddy but whether they’ve been a lifelong companion or joined you midway through your journey bears aren’t only for children. Danny Jackson H. makes this clear in Why I Sleep with a Stuffed Animal Even Though I’m a Fully Grown Adult.
[...] when a teen or adult sleeps with a toy, we tend to assume that person is developmentally stunted. Or that they have a weird obsession with children’s items. Whatever the case may be, people generally don’t think it’s acceptable. Those people are just plain wrong.
The article cites a 2017 survey by Build-A-Bear Workshop that claims “four in ten adult Americans still sleep with a teddy bear at night. And many of those bears are the same bears kept from childhood.” It’s not only Americans. Fran reminded me of a scene from the British sitcom Mr Bean featuring Rowan Atkinson in the title role. I’m not a huge fan of Mr Bean but the scene Fran mentioned, in which he reads his teddy bear a bedtime story, is engaging. As she told me, “I love his teddy story!”
Reading to others — be they teddy bears or people — is for everyone. Fran and I have a history of reading to each other as I described several years ago in It’s Not Just for Kids: Reading Together for Fun and Friendship. One book we’ve read together is Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, which Fran gifted me for my birthday last year. The stories are delightful in themselves but there’s also a mental health connection. According to a slightly tongue-in-cheek article on The Disorders of Characters in Winnie the Pooh by The Canadian Medical Association at Winniepedia (“the Wikia wiki for everything about that cubby, tubby, silly old bear Winnie the Pooh and his friends in the Hundred Acre Wood”) Winnie has an eating disorder, Piglet has anxiety disorder, Tigger has ADHD, Kanga has social anxiety, Rabbit has Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Christopher Robin has schizophrenia, and Eeyore “suffers from depression and is always sad.” For all that, there’s no hint of stigma or discrimination in the stories. There are confusions, frustrations, and grumbles but the inhabitants of the Hundred Acre Wood are always there for one another. This is expressed beautifully in a quotation by mental health advocate, writer, and speaker AnneMoss Rogers.
The awesome thing about Eeyore is that even though he is clinically depressed, he still gets invited to participate in adventures and shenanigans with all of his friends. And they never expect him to pretend to feel happy, they just love him anyway and never ask him to change.
Rogers is no stranger to mental illness. Her youngest son took his life in 2015 at the age of twenty. A guest post at her Emotionally Naked blog describing child sexual abuse opens with a reference to a beloved childhood toy (“I wrapped my skinny arm around Pooh’s neck. I couldn’t go anywhere without him.”) and includes a quotation in which Pooh Bear seeks to reassure Christopher Robin. “Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.” That line exemplifies the gentle wisdom to be found in Milne’s writing regarding friendship, courage, and living the simple life. Benjamin Hoff drew extensively from Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner for his 1982 book The Tao of Pooh in which he introduces the Eastern belief system of Taoism to a Western audience. Other examples of Pooh’s wisdom are not hard to find.
“A day spent with you is my favorite day. So today is my new favorite day.”
“You can’t stay in your corner of the forest waiting for others to come to you. You have to go to them sometimes.”
“A friend is someone who helps you up when you’re down, and if they can’t, they lay down beside you and listen.”
The last of those echoes something Fran’s said about our friendship when she’s not doing so well. The following is excerpted from the Epilogue to our book High Tide, Low Tide.
It’s true when I say I would be dead if Marty hadn’t come along. So much hurt, so much pain, so much rejection, it made no sense to stay. Not only did he lend me his ear, he lent me his brain and lent me his heart. Mine were broken. He did not reach down a hand to pull me up from my dark hole. He came down and sat with me while I began rethreading, bit by bit, what could be mended. He let me baby step on his feet until I could dance on my own. To him it wasn’t about getting me to climb out. It was about being with me in all of it.
Pemberton wasn’t the only cuddly toy I made when I lived in London all those years ago. Others included two or three small teddy bears, budgerigars, an Old English Sheepdog, and several white rats. A few were made to order for colleagues, others were gifted to friends. I don’t know if they’re still cherished but I can hope they continue to bring a smile to their respective owners. Pemberton Bear’s fur isn’t as soft as it used to be. It’s matted in places. As Fran noted, Bubb’s nose requires occasional retouching. But matted fur and a worn nose aren’t defects or blemishes. They’re the result of and the reward for years of being loved. I remember my friend telling me that Pemberton lived on her sofa and was often cuddled. I think of that a lot. Margery Williams knew a thing or two about being loved. Her 1921 children’s book The Velveteen Rabbit is a recommended read for anyone in need of reminding what it means to be real.
“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
Pemberton and Bubbs are part of our respective lives. They are loved deeply and return comfort when comfort is needed. As Michael Bond put it in A Bear Called Paddington, “It’s nice having a bear about the house.”
Over to You (and Your Bear)
In this blog post Fran and I have shared a little about our beloved bears, Bubbs and Pemberton. Do you have a bear? Has he or she been with you since childhood or did you meet along the way? Perhaps it’s not a bear but another cuddly that means the world to you. We’d love to hear your story, either in the comments or via our contact page.
Photos by Martin Baker.
No comments:
Post a Comment