Teddy

He sits on my bed in the same place he's always claimed. Different houses, different beds, different cities. But always next to me. I've relied on him for over 26 years. He's gotten me through fights, college exams, punishments, thunderstorms, bad days, and painful breakups. I hugged him tightly at 8:00 p.m. on warm July evenings, laying in bed listening to the neighborhood children continue their games. The sun was setting and it didn't feel like bedtime. But the streetlights were on, so I was home... tucked into bed.

With my teddy bear clutched to my heart.

My parents tell me that I was too eager to wait nine months. My mom went into labor at my baby shower, and my parents rushed to Wyandotte General Hospital while my grandmothers kept the guests entertained. I was born the next morning at 1:06 a.m., almost one month ahead of schedule. When they brought me home for the first time, my parents placed one of the baby shower gifts next to me in the bassinet. A teddy bear. My Teddy. I was tiny and weighed just about five pounds.

Teddy was bigger.

The other stuffed animals came and went. They were eventually packed up and donated away, but my Teddy was different. I remember attending a live production of The Velveteen Rabbit when I was about nine years old - it horrified me. I made my parents promise that they would never take my Teddy away from me, even if I contracted scarlet fever. They promised. That summer, I got chicken pox and I was still terrified that my bear would be taken from me forever. But Teddy stayed beside me, in the crook of my arm, never to leave.

I wasn't one of those kids who took their stuffed animal to school or on errands with my mom - Teddy usually stayed home - but family vacations were different. During one summer road trip, the entire family recognized the emotional value of my bear when I tearfully realized that Teddy had stayed behind at our last motel. One hundred miles behind us. After thoroughly searching the car, my daddy, a most wonderful, understanding man, promptly turned the car around and silently accepted the additional two hundred miles. After that, we had a checklist when leaving hotels: children? Check. Teddy? Check. Sometimes my dad would call out "Teddy!" ahead of "Heather and Steven!"

After learning fire safety in elementary school, I decided that as he was my most valuable possession, Teddy would leave a burning building with me. Even more morbidly, I used to wonder what would happen to Teddy in the event of my untimely death - would I give him to relatives or have him buried with me? I'm not sure that I could answer that question even today.

Teddy came with me to sleepovers in elementary school, track meets in high school, and made the journey with me to college. Riding high atop my brand new pillows and duvet cover in our overpacked Windstar, he too experienced Ann Arbor dorm life.

He is no longer the same bear from the August of my birth, probably because my parents never put a stop to his slow destruction. I am told, always with suppressed giggles, that I used to pull out Teddy's fur and stick it up my nose. My parents thought it was hilarious and just let it happen. I was entertainment. But poor Teddy! And yet, he endured the worst.

I guess that helps explain why Teddy accompanied me in my relocation five hundred miles from home: graduate school in Washington, DC. A place that intrigued me, yet a place where I would be completely alone for the first time in my life. But I wanted the best. I suppose that if the best Museum Studies masters program in the country had been located in southeastern Michigan, I would have stayed in the Midwest. But it wasn't. It was in my nation's capital and I was moving ahead at full speed.

Now, almost five years later, I can barely recall that early loneliness. DC is now my place, my home, my life. The unknown brought me to DC. Needing more than just a change of scenery, my decision to leave all that was familiar to me was one of the best choices of my young life. I was cut out for so much more than the suburbs of Detroit. I needed a place that belonged to everyone. A place that few called home. I would call DC home.

You might think that a 26 year old woman should have no need for a security blanket, but I don't see it that way. He may look absolutely pitiful and more like a mouse than a bear, but Teddy is a comfort to me and my link to my past. He's part of who I am.

And the nights I sleep most soundly are the nights that my Teddy is clutched in my arms.