As I’m sure you know by now, Bear is magic. He leaves presents for people when they need them, he pops up in weird places, and he makes movies of himself wandering around the house. But just because he is magic does not mean that he is not old and well used. I fear that his magic does not apply to things like wear and tear. And so it was that a small hole in his neck began to expand and gradually became so large that it threatened to endanger his very head.
I don’t know if you are familiar with the rules of magic, but there are a very few ways that one can successfully kill a magical creature. Fire is often one way, and another time-honored way to destroy a creature with inhuman powers is to separate its head from its body. This was an emergency. The problem was, Bear’s neck had been sewn together many times before; this time a little thread just wasn’t going to cut it. We needed a patch.
It was at our third fabric store where we finally discovered some cloth that mildly resembled Bear’s fur. A slightly grayer shade than bear’s robust reddish brown, at least this cloth was fuzzy and in the brown spectrum. We bought a quarter yard, which means we have plenty left over for future patches, and also picked up a bag of stuffing. Bear’s stuffing had, over the years, like many of us I am sad to say, become pushed down into his stomach and butt, greatly expanding those areas while leaving little to no stuffing in the biceps and neck. It was time for some fabric surgery.
Bear opens his birthday present without the use of his neck.
Luckily (?) the hole in Bear’s neck was large enough by this time to allow several fingers into it, so I was able to stuff the fluff into his arms and chest and neck areas, giving him a much more toned look. Like Woody at the end of Toy Story 2, every was very impressed with Bear’s new buff physique. As for the sewing, I am terrible at it. Someday I will tell you the story of the midnight dragon with the backward head, but for now let me just say that we waited for my wife to get home and sew the patch on.
If you look closely, you can see the grayish area under Bear’s chin, but from a distance you can hardly tell. And he sits up much straighter than before. “He’s taller!” my daughter shouted in delight as we handed her best friend back to her. And so he was.
The “New” Bear
It may be that eventually Bear will go completely gray, and his stuffing may shift from one place to another more inconvenient place, but it happens to all of us I suppose. And after all, magic or not, Bear is only human.
Ruby and Bear, 6 1/2 years ago