by Sheldon Oberman

They call them transitional objects, those pillowy pals that we clutched and clung to when Mom was out of reach, the teddys, pandas and blankies that substituted for mother in the cradles and the cribs of early childhood.
My teddy was a thread bare brown bear with button eyes. There is nothing left of it now except a tattered memory. I was nine or ten, rushing from somewhere to anywhere when I halted in surprise at the sad sight of my old teddy. I had outgrown him long before but there he was, lying dejected outside the back door. My parents were doing their fall cleaning and I suspect that he was headed for some sort of disposal. I did not know how to react. Was this a friend in need or merely a worn out toy? For a moment, I swayed between infancy and boyhood. Then, without even a twinge of loss, I rushed on towards my future and teddy faded from my thoughts, as inconsequential as the fallen leaves.
My daughter, now 23, was far more loyal to her teddy. She'd always kept a fierce grip on that yellow music box bear. It's no surprise she's tucked it away somewhere, supposedly for her future children. I have to wonder if she will ever share it, especially with someone as careless as a child.

I've seen other young women turn their nostalgia into a consumer passion, collecting teddy bears, stuffies and now beanie babies until their bedrooms become shrines to their own childhood innocence. Transitional objects stuck in transit.
My daughter has taken a different route. She's packed away her teddy but keeps a cat in active service, a creature as soft and cuddly as any stuffy. Its purr requires no batteries; its coat requires no dry cleaning. All it needs is feeding, brushing, fresh litter, costly visits to the vet, and constant indulgence. "It's still less trouble than a baby," she tells me. Her cat seems to be a different sort of transitional object, one that will guide her forward towards motherhood rather than backward into childhood.
My youngest son, Jesse, carried his teddy everywhere. One wintry day when he was still a toddler, he forgot it at the park. He and his care giver rushed back only to find the teddy seized by three older boys who were out to prove their contempt for lovable things; they were kicking Jesse's teddy across the field like a soccer ball. The bear was rescued, carried home, gently bathed, dried and wrapped in a blanket, all under Jesse's fretful supervision. We have a photo of the final process; a sad looking boy comforting an equally sad looking bear. It is an image that we cherish - Jesse's first great act of empathy.
Teddy remains a great friend, despite Jesse's new models -the action figures, Pokemon creatures and Nintendo characters that train children for a wilder, rougher world.

Teddy had a partner, Panda, who was Jesse's night bear and bedfellow. When we got our cat, Oreo, Jesse found it in his heart to share Panda with her. Black and white Oreo made Panda her own transitional mother by regularly nursing on it, gently kneading and suckling its soft synthetic belly. However, the cat soon learned that security is also transitional.
Beau, a young border collie/lab, crashed into our lives some month's ago with a puppy's bottomless hunger for affection. We gave him his own small panda. He chomped it eagerly and pranced with it about the house. For a couple of weeks the small cosmos of our family seemed to have all its planets in alignment; boy, cat and dog were happily matched up with a panda. Until Beau got a sudden doggie idea - a small intellectual step for us, but a giant leap for dogkind. Beau decided to replace his panda with the cat.
Our home is now, if you'll excuse the expression, pandemonium. We never know when we'll be startled by a clamour of barks and meows, a scramble of claws on hardwood and a blur of black and white up and down the stairs, over beds and under tables. Inevitably, the dog catches the cat and then he paws, sniffs and licks her shamelessly. The cat fights back but somehow, with neither one getting hurt, Beau prevails and Oreo goes limp as if her mother had her by the scruff. Oreo has become our young dog's teddy.

The vet says to let nature take its course. The dog trainer says Beau will eventually find another object of affection. Dr. Freud would say our dog's need for a mother substitute is a hopeless but eternal search. I suppose that's true for everyone: people and pets. We all crave some sort of teddy or perhaps by now it's some sort of teddy substitute - it's simply a matter of looking for love in all the soft places.
THE END

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