“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
“Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit.
“Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.”
“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”
“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 your 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.”
This poor bedraggled teddy bear is my very own personal Velveteen Rabbit. I don’t remember a time in my early childhood that my Teddy was not a part of. To me, he was as real as any member of my family. I included him in all my playtime activities, and could not go to sleep at night without him. Other than my parents, my love for Teddy was my first experience with unconditional love. I loved him, and he loved me, and all was bliss.
Life and time have a way of changing children. How often have you looked at your own children, thinking “I want to freeze this moment in time forever, and keep you just the way you are right now”? I know I’ve felt that way about my children many times, and I imagine my parents must have felt that way about me. But I also know that growing up is a good and necessary thing. Time passes and childhood fancies give way to more sophisticated pastimes. Such was the case with Teddy. Real life adventures gradually started to take the place of my imaginary ones with Teddy. Just like the Velveteen Rabbit, or Puff the Magic Dragon, or even Jesse the cowgirl from “Toy Story 2”, Teddy began to be left behind while I went out adventuring, but I always looked forward to snuggling with him at night.
Summer vacations were wonderful times for me, growing up. My Dad, a teacher, would take a second job during the summer, but would often leave time during the month of August to take the family on an extended summer vacation. For us, back in the late 60’s, that always meant a road trip! We would pack the whole gang in the trusty Ford station wagon and head out, loaded down with our family of eight people, all of our luggage, lunches consisting of sandwiches and green grapes packed by Mom, armed to the hilt with maps and atlases for navigation and with books and our imaginations for entertainment during the long hours spent in the car. We would sing silly songs, look for license plates from as many states as we could find, find the alphabet–in order–on the billboards and road signs we would pass along the way (“Q” and “Z” were always the hardest to find) and play our family’s special “White Horse” game. The first one in the car to spot a white horse and yell it out (“White Horse!”) would be rewarded with a nickel from Dad. One year we went east, to New York City and the World’s Fair. I remember looking up in awe at the tall buildings of Manhattan, recall visiting the Empire State Building and feeling very annoyed that my older sisters and brother got to go all the way up onto the observation deck with Dad while my younger sister and I had to stay inside with Mom. I can still see the spiraling hallways and dizzying art of the Guggenheim Museum, and the inspirational Statue of Liberty in the harbor, glimpsed through the foggy, misty drizzle that prevented us from taking the ferry out to get a closer look. I remember swimming on Jones Beach, my first experience with waves and salt water. The World’s Fair was a wonder of sights and sounds and technological marvels. It impressed me much the way Disney World impressed my own kids years later–minus Mickey Mouse, that is. On our way home we traveled a northern route that took us to Niagara Falls—breathtaking– and through the upper peninsula of Michigan, where my child’s imagination was even enchanted by the lights of the Mackinaw Bridge at night, looking like a jeweled princess crown. I lost my first tooth on that trip, and took my first shower (a rite of passage into the grown-up world…going from the bathtub to the shower!) I turned seven that summer, which is the age Isaac will be in just a few months. To me he is still such a little boy, barely out of infancy, but I remember feeling very grown up at that age. Except I still needed my dear old Teddy—I wasn’t too old for him!
The summer after our trip to New York we headed in the opposite direction, to the Oregon coast. In all of the trips I remember from my childhood, we would plan our stops so that we could stay with friends and relatives along the way. Many of my parent’s siblings had moved west over the years, and I had a string of aunts, uncles and cousins all the way from North Dakota through Idaho and into Oregon. Along the way we enjoyed seeing many natural wonders as well, including the Rocky Mountains, Yellowstone National Park, Idaho’s Craters of the Moon, and finally the magnificent Pacific Ocean, where I remember being impressed by some of God’s most interesting creatures, the Sea Lions at Sea Lion Caves. Throughout these summer adventures, Teddy was my beloved companion. But more often than not, he would be left behind in the car while I went out exploring the wide wonderful world. Sometimes he would come in at night to sleep with me, but because of the disruption of my normal routine, even that was not always guaranteed. All I needed to know was that he was nearby, if I needed him. He was my reassurance that all was right in the world.
We were gone for almost three weeks on our trip to Oregon and back. When we finally pulled into our driveway, I seem to recall it was late at night, and I was hurried off to bed almost immediately. Back in my own cozy bed, in my familiar surroundings, I suddenly realized I was missing Teddy! In fact, I couldn’t recall seeing him since staying in the last home we had visited before beginning the marathon return trip (we drove almost straight through from Oregon back to Minnesota, stopping only once, if I am remembering correctly, to sleep briefly in a roadside motel). Instantly I was wide awake, shaking with fear over losing my beloved friend. My poor parents had to tear the car apart, look through all of the luggage, inspect every bag, box or package that we had brought back with us, but to no avail. Teddy was gone, and I was inconsolable. I’m sure I must have cried myself to sleep that night, and the next day my Mother began the impossible task of trying to find a suitable replacement for an irreplaceable friend. We went to every store in town that might sell teddy bears, but nothing we saw could possibly take my Teddy’s place. My Teddy was one-of-a-kind. My Teddy had pink fur in his ears and on his hands and feet. My Teddy had embroidered eyes and ears, not hard, glued on, fakey and ugly plastic ones. My Teddy had a certain softer than feather feel to him, and of course he had his own special smell as well. Nothing could ever take his place, and yet, I needed something. I wasn’t as grown up as I thought; I couldn’t just let go of that part of my life so easily.
I finally agreed to let Mom make me a replacement Teddy. She was an accomplished seamstress, and when she found some fuzzy white material and made her own pattern from memory, she produced a teddy bear that was a fair reproduction of the original. My new Teddy was not as soft as my old Teddy, and he didn’t have the pink ears and paws that my lost Teddy had, but he was about the right size and shape, and he had carefully, lovingly embroidered nose and eyes instead of hateful plastic ones. It took awhile for me to accept my new Teddy, but eventually he became just as dear to me as my first cherished companion, although it was a different love, an older love, born of the older and wiser child I was becoming. Like love grows for a second (or in my case, third, fourth or fifth) child, Teddy the Second grew in my heart, just as Teddy the First had done. Each new love takes on it’s own unique qualities, no better or no worse than the love that preceeded it or the love that may follow it. It’s just…different. And special.
The epilogue to this story takes place about 8 years after that fateful trip to Oregon. By this time I was a teenager and my affections had turned from teddy bears to real live boys. We were visited one day by some old friends of my parents, who had recently returned to Minnesota from years of living in Oregon. In their possession, lo and behold, was a misshapen lump of grayish fur, with a flattened head and four limbs, only two of which were still firmly attached to the body. If you could even call it a body…most of the stuffing was gone. They produced this pathetic looking creature and presented him to me with a bit of embarrassment. Apparently their boys had been a bit rough with my long-lost friend, but despite his sad appearance, I was overjoyed at his return! In spite of the years that had passed, in spite of his replacement, Teddy the Second, in spite of my new interest in teenage boys, my heart responded with a childlike love, pure and intense. It didn’t matter to me that he was falling apart, it didn’t matter how battered his appearance was…he was MY Teddy, and through eyes blurred by love and tears, I embraced him with my inner child and felt the bliss and the reassurance that the world was indeed a place of unexpected and wonderful blessings.
Be real, be blessed,
Leah
. Isaac is showing us his blue gum, which explains the unusual-looking grin…although he is known for striking a rather exaggerated pose as soon as I point the camera in his direction…somewhat of a ham 
, he is! (Is it just me, or did that sound a little yoda-like?)
)
!!!
Our little ones are growing up!
. 
…I did see a very interesting looking way to prepare ham while perusing the food channel on Saturday morning.
. He is almost too big for this now, and usually hates the confinement, but I figured I might get the shopping done more quickly if he was in the cart, so I plopped him in and off we went.
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