(L-R): Grumpy, Grumpette, Grumpton and Grumpford Bear are ready and waiting to meet their maker. Photo / Ilona Hanne
It’s time for four much-loved teddy bears living in my home to meet their maker. In fact, they are long overdue for that meeting.
However, before you panic and shield your children’s eyes from what appears to be some kind of slasher horror-style article involving innocent teddy bears, let me reassure you. No teddy bears have been, or will be, harmed in the reading or writing of this piece.
The maker our teddy bears are about to meet (in fact, they will have by the time this article is in print) is my father, and given he and my mother last visited the bears - not to mention their Kiwi grandchildren - 1372 days ago, it’s a visit that is well and truly overdue.
By the time my parents land at New Plymouth airport on Monday, it will have been three years, nine months and three days since we last saw them. That’s a long time when you are 11, as their youngest grandchild is. Actually, it’s a long time for 40-something daughters, too.
With three New Zealand grandchildren here, plus a daughter and son-in-law, that’s 20 birthdays, three Christmases, four wedding anniversaries and four Easter Bunny visits all celebrated here without them.
Obviously, we can blame that dreaded C-word Covid for much of this absence, made worse by a brush with the other health-based C-word for my father prior to the arrival of Covid, meaning their plans to visit us in December 2019 were derailed. At the time, unaware of the approaching virus, we blithely planned for an Easter visit in early 2020 instead.
Hindsight is great, isn’t it?
Thanks to Covid lockdowns and travel bans we found ourselves living on opposite sides of the world for nearly four years, celebrating birthdays, opening presents, and sharing news via the computer rather than in person. We watched from afar as my father went through treatment (successful treatment, thankfully), unable to do any of the heavy lifting for him and Mum. With 18,768 kilometres between us, we couldn’t cook meals, pick up their shopping or run other errands for them, and the time difference made it tricky at times when it came to talking to children between school-time and bedtime.
Or to make the same point in less words - dear reader, it sucked.
We are lucky, of course, to live in a time of technology. So, while we couldn’t physically be together, we were able to bridge the gap thanks to all sorts of clever technology. From instant messaging (no waiting for letters to cross oceans) to video calls, communication was personal, even if not in person. We could order almost instant delivery of all sorts of gifts and presents, from flowers to books, or for the younger members of the family, Lego and lollies, and my parents could even watch end-of-year prize-givings thanks to school-supplied audio-visual links.
The thing that bridged the gap best of all for my three children, however, was none of the above; but rather, three well-loved (ie. dog-eared) teddy bears. These three bears are members of the illustrious Grumpy Bear family, a small but loveable tribe of bears all made by my father. Each of the grandchildren - my three and my brother’s two - have a bear, each individually named and gifted to them sometime after their birth by their (self-named) Grumpy Grandad. The original bear that started this actually came from Aotearoa, in the form of a kit bought from a teddy bear shop in Tīrau when my parents were visiting many years ago. Since then, fabric, thread and stuffing have been sourced from all over the place, and each grandchild’s birth has resulted in a new bear being brought to life.
Our children’s bears are well-travelled. From school camps to long-haul flights, they have been constant companions through the highs and lows of childhood. They have provided comfort when friendships go wrong, have been stand-in grandparents for whānau days at schools and have fought regular battles against bad dreams and monsters under the bed for many years now.
This lovely family tradition has grown to include more bears - for my mother, my grandmother and myself. The bears represent much more than a few metres of fluffy fabric, some glass eyes and a range of hand-stitched noses that my father is never happy with - they represent a sense of family that no travel ban, diagnosis or worldwide pandemic can break.
Near the end of every grandparent visit (which, prior to those two C-words, was a happy annual tradition), a photo is taken. Seated on our living room sofa, three children, two grandparents and three very well-loved bears smile for the camera. Over the years, the photo has changed in a lot of ways - the small children whose feet dangled off the edge of the cushion are long gone, replaced with teens or nearly-teens who barely all fit on the sofa together; the bears have become slightly less fluffy and clearly more well-travelled, complete with various scars of a life well lived (a scratched eye from an incident involving a friend’s dog, a hospital badge from a child’s operation, a slightly unstitched smile where a nervous child has found comfort), but one thing hasn’t changed. Love, connection, and a very special family tradition shines through in each of the photos, thanks to some very special and loved bears, and their equally special and loved maker.
It’s been a long time between photos, or drinks, for this family reunion, and I think I speak for us all - adults, children and bears - when I say we plan to make the most of it.
Covid may have taken away many things over the past few years, but it’s also served as a valuable reminder to treasure the times we do have with loved ones, and to take every opportunity given to make memories whenever we can.