Even Here

a teddy bear as icon

I wonder what that teddy bear means to you.

As you sit there with a cardboard sign, blurred words too small for me to read as I pass by. And I haven’t got time to stop. I don’t want to stop either. Even if I could.

You don’t make eye contact. To my relief.

Otherwise I’d need to acknowledge you and right now I don’t really want to. That’s my problem, not yours. And yet I walk on with the sense that I have still been seen.

That bear. Your head is bent down, and you’re huddled around a teddy bear, your wet, wavy hair flopped over it. Whatever it means to you, it means I cannot ignore. Or forget.

And suddenly I am looking. At it. At you. At the whole scene differently.

I peer at it. Drawn to another plane. Of mystery and wondering.

The bear, your posture, the sign, my walking past — all of it now sits together in my memory like a still frame I cannot step out of.

I wonder who gave it to you. Or did you buy it yourself? It doesn’t look that new — though maybe that’s just because you’re outside all the time. It’s going to get a bit beaten up, isn’t it. I guess it shares that with you. A little worn down. Like it has travelled far.

Is the bear from a life you lived before? From a childhood long past? A small remnant of something that hasn’t entirely disappeared — a fragment that refuses to be thrown away, even when everything else feels temporary. I catch myself wondering whether someone once held you gently in the way you hold the bear.

Does your bear have a name? A bear should have a name. Paddington. Winnie the Pooh. Arthur means bear in old English — and that looks like an old bear. But maybe the bear is a girl. A Care Bear, of sorts, or at least a bear that cares. For you. I hope you have other friends as well. But maybe, for now, you’re using what’s available to stay present in a world that hasn’t always been kind.

I’ve still got a teddy bear, you know. It’s called Douglas. My uncle gave it to me when I was born, and my mum knitted a little dressing gown for it. It has buttons with ducks on. It brings back memories — like when I broke my arm falling off a slide. I was climbing up the wrong way and fell. My mum carried me up a hill with me in one arm and the teddy in the other. When they put a cast on me, they made one for Douglas too. Has your bear had any adventures? Does it bring back memories?

I can’t carry mine around though. Although sometimes I think I might like to. Somewhere along the way I learned that you leave certain things behind if you want to be taken seriously. Je suis un homme sérieux. Serious people do not carry bears. You don’t seem to have learned that lesson — or maybe you have and decided it wasn’t worth keeping, but the bear was. That’s probably more sensible.

And maybe there is something braver in that. Not pretending you don’t need comfort. Not hiding the small things that help you remain human.

The moment both softens and unsettles. A small, worn thing that draws me back into a memory that refuses to disappear, quietly insisting tenderness — even here.