My Three Bears

I used to love stuffed animals.  As a youngster, I had a wide assortment of them.  They were my friends and they all had names.  When I was very young, I had a teddy bear, a rather ugly looking one actually, whom I named Paddington, as in the famous storybook bear.  There are pictures of me in my family's collection of photographs in which you can see me carrying him.  To me, he had a life and a soul that only I understood.  All my stuffed animals did, but his personality suited me best.

Every night I would line up my friends around the perimeter of my bed, on the bed not the floor.  There were monsters on the floor, especially under the bed.  I didn't wish to put them in harm's way, but they did protect me from the evils that lurked beyond my covers in the dark, or so I believed for a long time.  As I grew older, and more experienced with the wily ways of the evil that lurks in the dark corners of our world, my faith in my friends wavered.  Eventually, I packed them away and moved on without them, some even found new homes.  Still, their personalities remained and I didn't have the heart to put many of them "down" so to speak.  If I try, I may be able to remember all of them and their names, but it seems a silly venture to undertake at this point in my life.  Still, I remember Paddington vividly.  He lives in my dreams and my heart.  Only he knew all my deepest, darkest thoughts and feelings.

My S.O. would probably wonder what I'm talking about, "packing them away and moving on", since we have two stuffed bears looking down at us from the top shelf of my bookshelves in our room and a couple of beanie babies peeking out from around  the posts on our headboard.  Those are newer friends, ones I acquired in my adult life, some as gifts from friends and relatives.  One bear, named Lucky, came home with me from Atlantic City in 1983, a trip I'd really just as soon forget.  It was love at first sight when I saw him.  He was the only thing good that happened on that trip. The other bear, Truffles, warmed my heart during the lonely nights after I broke up with my fiancé in 1987.  The beanie babies came from my children and niece, can't very well get rid of those, but they don't understand my soul the way Lucky, Truffles and Paddington do.   

As much as my S.O. dislikes frilly, feminine things in his house, he has never uttered one word about my stuffed friends.  We've never even discussed them.  Perhaps he understands the childish security they provide for me.  After all, we all have something we hold on to for security, even if we would rather not admit to it.  I would hazard a guess that his security comes in the form of a t-shirt tucked away at the bottom of his dresser drawer, or a pocket knife he's had since childhood.   It is what makes the world we live in seem somehow more peaceful and our presence in it more significant.  These "security blankets" remind us that there always lives a comforting place in our souls to ward off the bad stuff.