Chapter Seventeen: Stuffed Animals

I have a feeling that stuffed animals are some sort of aliens who transform children's brains into nostalgic gobs of goo. I don't know why certain kids get so attached to stuffed animals. A kid can have a whole swimming pool full of these things, see another one in the store, and immediately become brainwashed. I remember standing in the aisle of K-Mart when I was about ten, crying uncontrollably over the thought of leaving behind the stuffed animal that had brainwashed me. I was sure it would be sad, alone and pine for me for the rest of its sad, lonely life.

And, yes, I do remember being fond of the book Corduroy.

I had enough stuffed animals to completely cover my bed. Each one was very special. And I don't mean that they each just had names. They had personality traits, relationships, feelings. The stuffed animal that had the most power of my little child brain was a red and yellow bear named with the same originality as my cat, Kitty. My bear's name was Teddy.

Teddy was given to me by my parents when I was very, very young. Before I could even talk, actually. Teddy was a gift to me when I was only a tiny baby. In fact, I believe Teddy was a gift to me for when I came to live with my parents.

I don't know the whole story, because my parents were so incredibly protective of me, but I do know, and always knew, that I was adopted. That was never a secret. But information about my biological parents (not my "real" parents, I was constantly told, but my "biological" parents. My "real" parents were the ones who raised me) was very guarded. I think my "real" parents were too freaked out to tell me about my "biological" parents because they thought I'd pack my bags and go back to them or something. As if. My "real" parents were very much real to me. My biological parents were strangers. Only my real parents would tuck me into bed every single night and pretend that they couldn't tell which one was me amidst my mountain of brainwashing stuffed animals.

When I was a very young child, my mom was a very good mother. She would sit by my bed and sing to me, running her fingers very gently over my closed eyelids. This was such a magical feeling, and I loved how it felt so much that I would keep my eyes closed after she'd stopped, because I didn't want to lose that magical feeling or break its spell. I can almost still feel her fingertips on my eyelids. It was one of the warmest feelings in the world. I try, now, to use this technique on my own children. They're not so easily enchanted.

At some point in my little life, my mom decided to bring out a good friend of hers to introduce to me. Barney was a very big, very old teddy bear that was given to my mom when she was very young. I thought it was very strange but also very cool that a grown-up would keep a teddy bear, and that they would call it by an actual name. My mom trusted me enough to borrow Barney for a while, but it was always very clear to me that Barney was her bear, not mine. While I thought this was pretty selfish, I didn't argue about it. If she wanted to be a grown woman and get all freaky about an ol' bear, fine with me.

Still, I dressed Barney in some nice clothes, a sweater and a pair of jeans, and introduced him to the rest of my stuffed family. From that point on, Barney spent a lot of time on my bed with the rest of the animals. When I had a camera, one of the first things I would do would be to get Barney, Teddy and all the other stuffed brainwashers in line and photograph them. My dad would give me such a hard time about this. "Film is so expensive! Why do you waste it by taking pictures of your stuffed animals?" Mostly, though, he would just make fun of me. You'd think I was the world's biggest idiot for going to Washington DC on a fifth grade trip and taking pictures of the pigeons instead of the Washington Monument. Big deal. The monument would be there forever. These pigeons were gonna take off. Seriously.

I never regretted taking pictures of my stuffed animals. Sure, I felt silly about it sometimes, but I never regretted it. After all, these animals were just as much a part of my family as my "real" parents were. As a matter of fact, one of the most traumatic things that ever happened to my little brainwashed self was when we came home from a long drive, returning from vacation or West Virginia to visit my mom's sister, or something. When we arrived home, one of my thoughtless, inconsiderate parents opened the hatchback and Teddy FELL OUT of the car onto the hard, rough gravel driveway. I knew immediately that he was dead and went directly into the process of grieving.

Yes, I was a drama queen.

But it wasn't all my fault! I mean, my mom took my bear very seriously. Almost as seriously as she took her own. Once every few months, she would cut a little slit in the seam on the back of Teddy's neck, take out all of his stuffing, and wash his body in the washing machine. After he had been fluffed dry, she would carefully re-stuff him, adding more fluff if necessary, restitch any places that were in need of restitching, and fix any facial features that were in danger of falling off. And then, she would carefully re-stitch that seam in the back of his neck and it would take me days to get his stuffing back the way I liked it.

But it was understandable that Teddy needed an occasional bath. I took him absolutely everywhere. And I'm sure I threw up on him, peed on his, drooled on him and I most definitely know that I cried on him. He understood so much more than anyone ever did. He understood my heartaches, tears, and all of the unfairness of a child's life. Teddy stood by me. Or rather, sat by me.

As I grew older, Teddy and I remained close, but Barney and I grew apart. After all, he was my mom's teddy bear. He just shouldn't be around, I thought, when I cried to Teddy about the bad words my mom would say to me, the bad words she would say to my dad, the bad names she would call us both, the embarrassing stories she would tell her friends about me, the fists that struck me, the hands that slapped me. Barney could never have understood the feelings I had. But Teddy did.

Teddy remains with me still. He went with me when I moved out of the house at age 18, no longer able to stand the mental and physical abuse my mom continually dosed out. He stayed with me through a failed engagement, many jobs, several apartments, and a handful of boyfriends. He continued to offer a shoulder (or head, or tummy, or back) to cry on.

Shortly after I moved out, Barney left home, too. He left home with my mom when she divorced my dad and moved out of the home in which we'd lived for almost my whole life. My dad lived there alone for a while, but since my grown, adult parents couldn't come to an agreement on how their stuff should be divided, and since the divorce continued to get uglier and uglier, they sold the house. My childhood home was no longer mine, and all of my stuff, everything in my yellow room, including Miss Kitty, disappeared from my life forever.