Old Teddy Bears

This is a photo of our own old teddy bears.

I am sure almost everyone has had an old teddy we loved to bits as children. They shared our deepest secrets and worries, and gave us a feeling of comfort and safety when we were alone.  When we got older, the most favorite teddy we had probably migrated to some chair, shelf, or box but usually we did not have the heart to throw them away.

The white teddy has a different story. After my brother moved to another country with his family a long time ago, they left many things behind to be thrown away. They left in such a hurry we were cleaning these things off house they had sold and I was so amazed when I found this old teddy in the pile of things to be thrown away in the back yard. As I had been playing with this teddy as a child too, I felt it was a friend of mine. I had given him a name too – he is Ivar. And there he was in a garbage pile, all torn and dirty and forgotten, expected to be thrown away..

I took the dusty teddy home, cleaned him, sewed his paw-pads back in place and mended the gash he had on his back, and fixed his ear.  And he has now been safely sitting in our bedroom for over twenty years.

He is made of real lamb-skin and has metal buttons as his nose and some sort of red wax cloth as his paws and ears.  I think he was born somewhere in the fifties

The smaller teddy is my husband’s. He got it when he was born, so he is soon fifty years old too. This old teddy bear was never forgotten in a rubbish heap. He was loved and carried around so that a lot of his furhas fallen off.  The teddy’s name is Pepi.  Isn’t he just adorable! He has a slightly turquoise and beige coloring and his nose and eyes and mouth have been sewn.. He is soft and molds easily into different positions, so he is perfect for a small child to carry around. And has Pepi been carried around!

The third teddy, the dark grey one, is called Veijo. He decided to follow us home when we were visiting the old town of Porvoo in Finland. There is a small shop whose owner makes these teddies by hand. Viljo was looking at me from the shelf and we connected immediately. He had a little note hanging around his neck, telling he was born on 11.11.1810

I wondered about his advanced years, and the shop keeper explained to me that all the teddies in her shop consider themselves as antique teddy bears so she needs to add two hundred years to their age to keep them happy. (Now they do not know there was no such concept as a teddy bear before Roosevelt, so she could do this without hurting their feelings.)

Both Pepi and Viljo are sitting in our living room – Pepi in a chair, and Viljo at our sofa. They have said they like to watch TV, but Ivar prefers peace and quiet and the lovely view from our bedroom window.

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