or: the show and tell teddy bear
Slippered feet float down the hallway to a sliver of light. The feet and slippers belonged to a boy who held with him a torn teddy bear. The light was from the other side of a door which led into his father’s room. It was the dark and scary time of night, when faces appeared in the whorls of the knotty alder closet doors and the house was said to be “settling”. The insipid dark of night, when creaks were most audible and rumbles from faucet pipes or the toilet filling moaned from deep within the home. Occasionally, there would be a radio program, tuned in a touch too loud and filling his father’s room like the light would reverberate beyond the door sliver and drift down the hall around the walls. Like the pipes stuttering and the commode filling.
The little boys hand reached out for the silver knob of the Mahogany bedroom door and clung to it waiting to hear a reaction from what was playing on the airwaves. Nothing but a feint samba. He leaned onto the swiveling rectangle and sidled into the light before he spoke. As the door gave way this little boy could feel a soft breeze from an open window. A shutter from the cold and the boy nearly dropped his teddy bear.
The teddy bear was a present from his mother just last Christmas. As the season melted into spring, the bear’s adornment had grown disheveled. Teddy had become awfully worn and very unkempt. Unkempt in that teddy bear was used often, usually a mischievous activity that required dirty work; something messy. Typically it was anything the boy could not do himself: sledding down impossible hills, rides through the laundry chute, splashing through giant mud puddles or climbing trees. It was only several months old but a child’s ragdoll go, what a child’s rag doll do and this object of affection had lived it’s days ambitiously ambivalent. He lived literally through a rough patch of life the boy would probably have endured alone but for what it was worth, served well as a best friend and companion.
The Samba was still subtle as it continued emitting from the tiny radio around the low lit heavily draped room. “Father?” the boy says into the dark matter over and beyond the dresser next to the door. The door fell in and the boy, who had been holding his teddy in the same hand as the handle, nearly lost a slippery grip of fuzz against the Hancock knob. The wind swept in from the window.
Rather gracefully approaching his father’s recliner next to a large queen-sized canopied bed set, the little boy held out his hands brandishing the teddy bear, exposing loose threads, fluff n’ stuffings.
The father who was asleep awoke and looked about the room in the nil dark and shivered. He looks at his son and then looks towards the large bed. He turns back to the boy and takes the bear for examination. He locates the hole his son is upset about, studies the cotton and touches it, smells his fingers and tastes it.
Giggles erupted from the boy as he watched his goof-ball father make fun out of the dismal night. The samba careened into a waltz.
The man heaves from the reclined position and rises from his chair with a stretch. Yawning and scratching life into his lower body he leads his son back down the hall to his bedroom. Along the way they pause in front of the closet to retrieve the small sewing kit. The boy had seen his mother use the silver plate threader to pull through the eye of a needle, a spool of yellow while stitching the long neck of his giraffe. Without light, the father enters his son’s room. He turns to his son before turning on the switch. He moves to the bed where he lays the bear out as if the mattress was a bier and prepares to perform a surgery.
With a frightfully serious look on his face, the father crawls onto the bed and kneels over the teddy. His son is watching as he exaggerates the distance from the floor to the bed. First crouching then slowly he brings the toe of his house shoe to a rail. His foot is plantar flexed like a ballerina as his plight becomes more an amusing dance. The son is aware, this is entertainment. His son rather enjoys watching his father use his legs. He watches as he pretends to be small and struggle. With the help of other stuffed friends the father reaches the top of the sheets where he will examine further, in better lighting, the damage to his son’s poor dilapidated friend.
The father starts by opening the hole a bit with his fingers and removing tufts of its cotton fluff. He works his fingers inside and then rears his torso upwards to thrust his hand further into the bear, nearly three fingers deep. Soon he has created an illusion that his entire arm is inside the bear but really his arm is between his legs. Reaching for another stuffed animal piled at the head of the child’s bed, this grown man makes a show in full Thespian swing. Struggling he pulls a small stuffed mouse out from the bear and declares; viola he has solved the issue, it was indigestion and the bear will be back to normal in the morning, as for his other friend, the church mouse, he will feel better after a good night’s sleep.
The boy objected that the bear was still not better, meaning the remaining hole in need of stitching. The father puts his cheek up the bears face as if he was listening to its breath and checking its pulse, then raises himself to look at the boy and agrees with sincerity, “you know you might be right”. He ponders for only a moment with his index finger tapping his bristly chin before he begins his reaching illusion again. Believing this time to have found the problem he feels for another toy and acts as if he is pulling it out. Pulls and heaves, fingers and sleeves..
The boy, now near hysterics, believing the game humorous and wondering how far this would go, he objects again that there is yet still more. This time the father continues the show, he pulls out several small toys and a couple medium toys. Again and again the father removes the stuffed toys. The one remaining is a giant giraffe that would clearly not fit between the father’s legs. It was obvious the game would be over soon but together the father and son laugh and together make a big joke about the giraffe.
Attempting to keep their illusion alive the father exhibits dramatic exaggerated movements and torsions of his body and pelvis to remove the supposed swallowed giraffe. “Push’em out!”, cheers and shrill shrieks of laughter. Finally exhausted with no more animals left to pull between his legs, the father then says tersely that the bear will be stitched up and kept for observation. The boy would be able to return tomorrow for visiting hours and see teddy bear.
The father now sleepy and spent but content never-the-less, lifts his son from his wheel chair and places him in bed next to the long neck of his giraffe and other stuffed animals. The son seems to have found a new appreciation for his toys of several Christmas’s ago and somehow feels safer.
As the father is leaving the boy peeks above his blanket and asks his father if he is going to take his baby with him. The father is unsure of what the boy is referring.
“Here, the baby giraffe you just gave birthed. Shouldn’t she go to the nursery?”
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