On Lisa Bear

Lisa Bear

If teddy bears could talk, I do hope Lisa would like me. My paternal grandparents gave her to me shortly after my birth, and she survived the abuse of my toddler days, during which she was often strung up by the neck and then dragged along behind me or tied to table legs.  I’ve no way of knowing whether I was practicing my knots, feared losing her,… or was a very morbid child.  I prefer to think that I acquired the disturbing habit of strangling my toys from observing something innocuous like dog leashes.  Necks are, after all, the least-slippery location on most stuffed toys (and live pets).

Lisa gained her name from my first grade teacher: Lisa Stark.  Well, all my animals at the time shared that name, but somehow only hers stuck.  At some later point in elementary school, I decided to clothe my bear’s “nakedness” in an old sundress from my baby days—one tied in front and one in back, though I removed the back dress at some point.

The book Sara Crewe and film The Little Princess first planted the idea of dolls displaying sentience when their owners left, but it was Toy Story  that made me begin to fancy my stuffed toys had feelings and might, if I neglected them, rise up and kill me in my sleep.  Years later, I read some Japanese mythology that encouraged this idea—namely, stories of inanimate objects that gained souls, some of which become vengeful spirits after having been abandoned.

As an intelligent Christian woman, I recognize this as nonsense, but as an over-imaginative child at night, this was a very eerie idea I couldn’t quite shake, no more than I could avoid racing and jumping into my bed the second I flipped off the light to keep any creature—monster or rodent—under my bed from reaching my legs.  Not that being in my bed instead of beside it would protect me from a determined critter… But I digress.  At least, of all my stuffed animals, I least feared Lisa and her pink cat companion (whose name I’ve bestowed, forgotten, and re-bestowed more times than I can recall.  She's currently "Marie").

Lisa, Marie, and teddy bear George accompanied me to college, half-forgotten and neglected except for the occasional affectionate pat and playful (or superstitious) address.  Now she graces the top of one of our bookshelves with the “special few” we have in our rental home.  The majority of her fifty-odd kin that I once kept have gradually been sent off to new homes.  Lord willing, though, Lisa will one day descend to my children, or else remain with me into old age and finally pass on to my niece or nephew.

The "special few" (George and Marie are on the left, and Lisa is near the right)