Teddy Bears

Week by week, we continue to read in The American Story: stories about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge; the rebuilding of Chicago; the Johnstown flood; Ellis Island; Lizzie Borden; Mark Twain and Helen Keller; the exploding of the U.S.S. Maine; Thomas Edison; William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer; Teddy Roosevelt and the bear cub; the brothers Wright; Prohibition; Texas' oil; the San Francisco earthquake and the ensuing fire of 1906. Of all those stories, the ones that interest Simon most are the ones that involve floods, explosions, fires and murder.

“I want to learn everything about Lizzie Borden. She was wicked,” he says. The library has one children's book about the trial. It seems to be out on permanent loan. Someone out there shares Simon's obsessions.

I, in turn, am smitten by a little story about Teddy Roosevelt. It's a light tangential story, slipped in between weightier, history altering events--a breezy respite of sorts.

Story goes that Teddy Roosevelt was invited to go on a bear hunt by the governor of Mississippi. After two days, Roosevelt hadn't shot a thing, so his hosts, afraid that the president would emerge from the hunt without a kill and without his dignity, presented him with a bear cub tied to a tree.

They said to him something to the effect of: “Here, Mister President. You can shoot this one pretty easily.”

Roosevelt, horrified, refused. We know that he answered: “If I shot that little fellow, I couldn't be able to look my boys in the face again.”

This story made good copy. The papers went wild. Roosevelt and the bear became symbols of compassion.

A savvy Russian immigrant by the name Michtom suggested to his wife she make a stuffed bear and maybe they could sell it in their candy shop. Within days, she couldn't keep up with the demand. Within a year, the Michtoms had founded at toy company. Everybody had to have a teddy bear.

* * *

Simon loves stuffed animals. He has dozens of them, all over his bed, in his closet, in a trunk. These days, he sleeps with his head on a polar bear and his arms around a huge fat kangaroo he recently bought for himself at IKEA. Near his head sits Sidney, the lion, who used to belong to his sister, keeping watch.

I don't know what all these stuffed animals mean to Simon. Regression, an unwillingness to grow up—there is some of that. A preference for a more merciful world, one in which the strong do not eviscerate the meek, a fanciful world where loving lions and bears guard the sleep of children —there is a lot of that.

* * *

My father had a teddy bear. At the end of the war, after his father had died, his mother and her sisters arranged for him to be sent to a school in southern Bavaria so that he would be safe from the bombs falling on Berlin. He took that teddy bear with him.

When the war ended, the school was at loose ends. They had run out of money and provisions. The kids were sent out to beg from the farmers nearby. If that didn't yield enough food, the kids stole whatever they could get their hands on. Chickens were barbequed. Dogs were slaughtered. My father was eleven. There was no way to get in touch with his mother. Railroad tracks, telephone lines, roads—everything had been destroyed.

A group of older boys at the school decided to just run away--walk home. My father was going to tag along. On the agreed upon morning, all the older boys wimped out. Father and another eleven-year-old decided to leave anyway.

600 kilometers through bombed out, occupied Germany. Along the way, American soldiers gave them some food, a coat, a place to sleep, sparking my father's great love for all things American. Eventually, the other boy and my father parted ways. Father walked on alone. He crossed a ditch full of shot SS, a pond of blood. He saw pyramids of the dead, stacked, or in flooded subway stations, bloated. He swam across a river and was shot at. Somehow he made it home to his widowed mother. The teddy bear was in his coat pocket.

* * *

I have a bear that belonged to my father. For decades, I thought that bear was the one Father had schlepped across Germany. Some years ago, he told me I had it wrong. This bear was not that bear. That bear was smaller and had been pitched way back when. It had been loved too much. It was too shabby.

The wrong bear sits in my bedroom for the last twenty-five years—see above. On one of my many visits to Berlin, my grandmother said I could have him. It sounds silly and sentimental, but he keeps me safe.