Margaret Rossiter Column: Disposal plans abandoned after the discovery of a beloved toy

The presence of a rubbish skip outside a home in any street is now a fairly common sight.
It is usually associated with a change in ownership, frequently a vacancy caused by the death of the occupant, or a re-location.
It is a clear-out of all the things no longer needed, a disposal of things once useful and maybe important, but now old and shabby and superfluous.
Consignment to the skip has to be accompanied by a dose of ruthlessness; dispense with sentiment; don’t analyse; just get on with it.
Then after a few days, when the skip is over-full, it leaves the street and goes to wherever skips go, hopefully to recycling, but most of it, I suspect, to the municipal dump, where it will be buried under tons of soil
Looking at skips in my neighbourhood recently, it seemed to me that perhaps I should anticipate such an occurrence, when my home would be subject to such a clear-out.
So I decided to look at the contents of presses and shelves at which I had not looked for years, maybe for decades.
I set some job conditions for myself; a half-hour each day for five days each week; equipment two large cardboard boxes, one for things that could be recycled and the second for rubbish; starting in second storey bedrooms, the first being that of elder daughter, who is now a grandmother.
And all to the background of gloomy world news on the radio and the reward of a cup of coffee at the end of the half-hour.
I made little progress; in fact I made none, because I first discovered a teddy bear. Well, Teddy Bear, to give him his official title.
He was lying prone at the back of the first shelf, fronted by a collection of old school books.

BELOVED TOY
He had been daughter’s most beloved toy, part of the family, and like her, he had grown older and older and by now had celebrated his 60th birthday, but the years had not been kind to him.
He was a pathetic shadow of his youthful self. His left eye had slipped out of its socket; one arm had detached itself, and instead of a bright yellow torso, his belly region was greyish and bare. He was old and decrepit.
Poor Teddy, I thought, he is not recyclable, and neither can he be restored.
He was about to become the first occupant of the rubbish box when I hesitated.
He was so loved by daughter, a daughter, (repeat now a grandmother). He shared her bed at night.
He had been kissed and talked to, sat with her at the table and when, at the age of four-and-a -half, she went to school, he was greeted with open arms when she came home.
A second look at the shelf revealed a miniature tweed coat, with a fur collar.
This was Teddy’s winter coat, made by the grandmother of daughters’s best friend, and was swapped for a red knitted winter pants and jumper, knitted by daughter’s grandmother, also to keep Teddy warm in winter.
(Note the involvement of grandmothers in the life of a teddy bear).

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SHOCK
When, in a phone call I mentioned these discoveries to daughter and told her they were being sent to the rubbish dump, I could hear the shocked shout of appeal made from her home in central Europe.
“Oh, mother, mother,” she said, “Do not send Teddy to the skip. He was so important to me.”
And when I described his sorry state, she said she would collect him on her next visit and take him to her home, together with his winter coat, and there restore his displaced eye and his detached shoulder, and he could “probably do with a good wash.”
So Teddy has resumed his residence at the back of the shelf and the rubbish box remains empty, but the incident left me pondering. Why are teddy bears so loved by children ?
Yes there are much-loved dolls, but they never occupy the same space as Teddy does in the affection of a child.
And yet Teddy is in a class apart. He is, in fact, classless. He bears no resemblance to any creature in the world of real animals and certainly not in the world of bears.

EMOTIONS
He does have a certain quality of innocence, of dependency, of other-worldliness, which may make him attractive to children who, after all, are discovering their own world of emotions, of loving and of caring.
Gathering material for the inevitable skip has been long-fingered for a time. The recyclable and rubbish boxes remain empty.
There may be a revisit to the shelves again, tomorrow, or the day after, or again on the day after......... Maybe!