TW

Welcome to June, month five of the calendar year, but the start of my summer. No more physically going to work until September, which means I have no excuse for not getting on with decluttering my house. And yet, something always seems to come up.

Last night, I took a break from my mad dash to finish all my work before the summer officially starts for me, and I went to my closet to find a pair of shoes that I really love but that don’t actually fit. I had decided it was time to stop deluding myself that they might magically become comfortable and, instead, get rid of them. As I have told you, ridding myself of things that I or someone else might someday use is very difficult for me, so this was going to be a small but significant move in the right direction – a bit of encouragement for the decluttering I might possibly achieve during a work-free summer. 

However, after a few minutes rummaging through clothing on the shelves and in boxes on the floor, and being distracted by items I had forgotten, I hadn’t turned up the shoes. But I had discovered something else that not only took my mind further from my task, but also illustrates why endeavours like this are so difficult.

A lot of the things we have are just things, clutter that we would often be better without, and that, if you are like me, you forgot you had anyway, but sometimes the things are special, with a story and connection to a specific time or place or person.

For example, my son visited a couple of months ago and somehow the conversation got on to the teddies he had as a child. I joined in, reminiscing about the adventures of Big Ted, Little Ted, and Panda Bear that I would invent for him every night before he went to sleep.

His wife told me how much he still loves panda bears today (don’t we all?) and I went upstairs and came back down with none other than Little Ted, who is actually a palm sized panda bear.

My son, who isn’t outwardly sentimental, seemed delighted to be reunited with the little guy and took him home when he and his wife left. I like to think that when he sees Little Ted, nice memories from his childhood will be unlocked, keeping him just a little bit closer to the rest of us.

Without being jogged, memories can become quite faded, but I believe Big Ted was actually the teddy that my mother got my eldest daughter when she was born. My son arrived 2 ½ years later, no doubt replacing in my daughter’s affections her teddy and a little lamb my father gave for. I feel like Big Ted might still be around somewhere. Maybe he, too, will be discovered during my great clean-out, and maybe his discovery will bring another tranche of memories to the surface.

Giving teddies to babies is a tradition in my family. I have the teddy that my father was given when he was born. When my father was dying, I put the teddy at his side in bed. I am not sure if it consoled him at all, but it made me feel better that he had someone there with him when I was out of the room. I never asked my father if his teddy had a name, and now I will never know. His teddy is a scrawny, scratchy old fellow, but he's still in pretty good shape considering he’s over 100 years old.

My own teddy, dates from a lot more recently, obviously, and he was given to me by my mother’s parents when I was taken to visit them at their house in Kent when I was a couple of months old. My grandmother died as I was on the night train back to our house in Cornwall, so Teddy is the first and last thing she ever gave me. 

Teddy, for that was always his name, was apparently bigger than baby me, but I don’t remember him until a few years later. He was made of sheepskin. He had a musical box that I believe played Brahms’ Lullaby (Brahms was my grandfather’s favourite composer) but I don’t remember hearing it. I do remember taking Teddy to the doll’s hospital in Fulham, one borough over from our London flat, to have the music box repaired. Sadly, the operation failed. The music box was removed and Teddy was left with a long scar down his tummy.

I can very clearly remember how much I loved Teddy, but that’s not surprising because he was my most constant companion from shortly after my birth until I left home and decided a teddy didn’t go with the extremely cool persona I had adopted. (This was shortly before Brideshead Revisited, which redefined teddies for a generation of Brits.)

Teddy and I went through a lot together. I am an only child, so there was never a sibling to split us up. Teddy was the one I told my secrets to, who I read to, who I taught to do acrobatic tricks made easier by his jointed arms and legs, and who I cuddled so tightly at night that I wore through the sheepskin. My mother gave him new blue button eyes when his glass ones fell off. She sewed him a new nose, and gave him blue cotton arms when his lambs’ fleece stuffing started to come out of the cracked leather.

When I was very young, I guess five or six, I ran away from home a couple of times. I can vividly remember folding up Teddy’s legs so he would fit in my little brown suitcase, putting whatever book I was reading in the case with him, leaving the house, walking until I got tired, and then sitting on a wall and waiting to be recovered.

I was too young for my escape to have been caused by a fight with my mother, so it is likely that I was just looking for attention. I am pretty certain I eventually walked home rather than being collected by a distraught adult, which was probably quite frustrating for little me. Whatever the details, I am sure I discussed it all with Teddy that night in bed.

Yes, I do still have him. Once upon a time, he might have looked something like Aloysious, but now he is in a terrible state. His blue button replacement eyes are long gone. Stuffing has been removed (by mice probably) from one of his new blue arms and one of his legs. There are bare patches and holes in his remaining skin. An ear is half gone. But I could never throw him out. It would be like throwing out a member of the family. I mentioned this the other day to one of my daughters, and she promised me she would look after Teddy after I am gone.

My father was also an only child, and his teddy obviously meant enough to him for him to hang on to it for his entire life. I wonder what memories the sight of his teddy triggered. I wish I had asked when I could. Like mine, my father’s teddy has a home to go to when the time comes, as is only right for retired teddies who have given so much in their youth.

My mother didn’t have a teddy as far as I can tell. She told me about a doll she loved, whose name was, I think, Rosebud. Sadly, Rosebud doesn’t appear to have survived the arrival of my uncle when my mother was eight. With a real live baby in the house, who needs a doll? But what memories were lost with her?

My youngest daughter has a twin sister, so, though she had plenty of stuffed toys, she didn’t seem particularly attached to any of them. Then, when she was about the age I was during my great escapes, she was playing with my son who hurled a pillow at her, tipping her in the direction of a metal table, the corner of which split her eyebrow.  We rushed her to the local hospital to get her eyebrow stitched back together. She was incredibly brave but, not surprisingly, started panicking when she saw a huge needle coming towards her eye. A nurse thrust a strange blue teddy into her hands. Clinging to it helped steady my daughter’s nerves and the doctor was able to do a rather splendid job with a resulting scar that is impossible to see today.

The teddy was made by hospital volunteers and, probably because of the trauma that threw them together, my daughter fell in love with it. She, being more inventive than I, named him Teddy Weddy, and the two of them were inseparable despite his never possessing the normal attributes of a cuddly bear. He was made of cotton – plain blue for his back and a flowery pattern for his front. The volunteer wasn’t actually very good at sewing or cutting patterns because the stitches holding together Teddy Weddy’s neck went right up to the edge of the cotton, which meant that the seam soon split, and repairs to Teddy Weddy were required almost immediately. Teddy Weddy’s head was sewn back on a number of times, he was stained and ripped, washed and patched; nevertheless, my daughter slept with him every night until she went away to college, after which Teddy Weddy was sidelined because youth is callous.

Sometime between then and now, I found Teddy Weddy hidden away somewhere and was faced with a decision. Did I throw him away because he was no longer wanted by his person? Or did I give in to my urge to hang on to things? You can obviously guess the answer. He was, however, pretty ghastly looking, so, in true Make Do and Mend spirit, I fixed him up.

Years ago, I bought my eldest daughter a beautiful silk velvet dressing gown. When she moved out, she left it, irredeemably stained and, in a normal household, fit only for the bin. But the dressing gown was made from such lovely material that I cut away the stained parts and hung on to the rest, just in case.

It turned out that the material was perfect for the Teddy Weddy restoration project, so I covered him the grey-blue velvet and wrapped some of the silk trim around his neck to hold it on more securely. After that, I put him in my closet and forgot about him because my daughter was living in New York and Teddy Weddy would sadly have been out of place.

When my youngest daughter asked about Teddy Weddy’s whereabouts a few weeks ago, I was surprised that her concern for him had rekindled. I told her that I wasn’t sure where he was, but that he would undoubtedly turn up somewhere. Secretly, I actually doubted that he would. I had forgotten about the repairs I had made, remembering him only in his most neglected state and worrying that I had, indeed, thrown him away because of it. The relief when I found him in my closet, and looking so much better than I remembered, was immense, because if I had thrown him away, my daughter would have been sad, and that would make me a terrible person on two counts.

When I see my daughter later this month, she and Teddy Weddy will be reunited. People who see him might still think he looks a little strange, but, true though he is, he is packed full of memories that might otherwise have been lost.