Mother Goose/ Bear

I saw this ‘Make your own teddy bear workshop’ and my first thought was “I wish I had someone to bring here…a little someone” and not “I wish they had those when I was a kid”.

See here’s where you go in (irresistible kid-magnet, isn’t it?).

Then you get to pick the skin of the toy you’ll create.

You can record your own voice or your favorite song and insert it into your toy.

Walk on to the stuffing machine. I don’t think this is really necessary from what I remember of my toy-making lessons but it makes for some damn fun watching…ask me, I walked into the workshop when I spotted this thing!

Oh, and you can also give your freshly born toy a bath and get a birth certificate issued!

For a change, I looked and listened without my cynical marketer’s thinking cap. And I imagined a toothless grin somewhere.

~O~O~O~O~O~O~

I don’t audition for potential husbands anymore the way I used to long, long ago. Actually, I don’t even audition prospective fathers because, in my mind, no man is ever going to be a good enough parent for my little one. The only people who can make me smile instantly, unthinkingly are under the age of 8.

And yet, when I was 21, fresh from the madness of adolescence and full of determination, I decided that I would never have a child. Because I didn’t want an over-crowded planet full of unhappy people. Because I didn’t want to be made responsible for yet another human being’s emotions. And most of all, because I was scared. Of labour, of someone else’s adolescence. Of being torn physically and emotionally.

Then one night I had a dream and this really did happen. In my dream, I was pregnant, bloated tummy almost full term. I remember my mother and grandmother’s faces around me. There was a husband somewhere but I couldn’t see his face even then. Then I went into labour right at a staircase landing and passed out. And when I woke up, they were all standing around me. Then someone laid a baby in my lap. That’s when I woke up. My life was changed forever by that nocturnal flight of imagination. I’ve never been able to pass a child since then without turning back and smiling or just looking, looking, looking. Does that make sense? No, biology never did, even in school.

If it is about biological urges, the compulsion to bind with and settle down seems to have passed me by. Even if I display classic mating behaviour with my many boyfriends, I suspect those are more the following of patterns I’ve learnt and seen around me. I’ve never met anyone with whom I felt that deep soul connection that they talk about. Absolutely no one I can even imagine as being important enough to call a soul mate. My life, the world and the universe are seen alone through my eyes, explored and experienced solo.

But when I see a child, something else, alien and yet unfamiliar rears its head inside me. And I want, want, want. Of all the things that life throws at you, I never thought I’d care about being a mother more than I could care about being a wife. But perhaps this too shall pass.

I finally define myself as independent of what any man wants me to be, when I can see myself as much more than a daughter, sister or girlfriend and men have become accessorial rather than vital to my happiness. I have the life I wanted ten years ago. And when I look further….what next? Something that will give it meaning, something more, something beyond.

A child shall lead the way….