Guest Post: ‘My First Love’ by Magdalen

In honor of the real Monkey Bear . . .

My husband and I went to see Toy Story 3 recently.  Expecting a crowded theater and tons of teeny tots, we bought our tickets online and got there thirty minutes early.  Our only mistake was to forget the tissues.  It’s got a wonderful happy ending (about which I will say nothing more), but it’s got its weepy moments as well.  The DH and I are suckers for those weepy moments.  (He’s worse than I am: he cried at Cars.)

Toy Story 3, which evokes the love cuddly toys have for their owners, took me back to the poignant saga of my very first love  — when I fell so hard that I didn’t think I could survive without my beloved.  I was seven years old.  He was rather older than me, and even then his best days were long passed.  But the moment I saw him, I knew I had to have him.

He was a stuffed panda bear.  I named him Pandle.

Pandle in Bermuda, circa late 1970s (with his “pet” shark)

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  I have to explain how we met.  My mother was involved in amateur theatrics in my hometown.  Sometimes she was in the cast, sometimes she was the props mistress, and on one famous occasion she got suckered into making the costumes for a play about Henry VIII and all those damned wives — I can still picture the fabrics for those gowns!  Because my older siblings were busy elsewhere, my brother and I would be allowed to accompany Mum to the theater.  There was a large props room that was good fun; lots of 1940s-era Bakelite telephones to play with.  On this occasion, in late 1963, there was something new in the props room: a tall (well, tall to a seven year old kid) wicker basket filled to the brim with stuff.  Lying on top was Pandle.

Pandle with our Siamese cat, Gabby; late 1970s

It was as if I recognized him; he was in my heart before I took my next breath.  I clutched him in my arms and as soon as my mother showed up, I asked her if I could have him, please, oh please?  I suspect I started to cry, which would have been craven and low if it hadn’t been such an honest reflection of my feelings.  My mother was flummoxed; all she could think to do was ask the director of that particular production.  Joe was a young guy; he didn’t care.  “Sure,” he said (meaning, “I don’t care,”) and just like that Pandle was mine.

We learned later that someone had filled the basket with items to be thrown away, which means Pandle was deemed trash.  I’m glad I didn’t know that at the time; seven is pretty young for the sense that but for a momentary decision to go to the theater I might never have met my true love — and that he would have died without all the devotion I knew he deserved.  (You can tell I come by my fondness for angsty romance novels honestly.)

Pandle became my  constant companion.  This ensured, of course, that my brothers routinely threatened to throw him into the Hudson River.  But he survived.  He was never a beautiful toy.  He must at one time have been glossy white and black fur, but when I got him, the only evidence of that was hidden in inaccessible seams.  The white fur wore away first, leaving the base canvas which aged to various shades of cream and tan.  When my mother patched him, she used beige for his chest and a brown calico muslin for his head.  His eyes became buttons and his metal nose lost its red highlights.

Pandle circa 1980, reading a magazine

Nonetheless, in his mind Pandle was always a very grand bear.  He would alternate between wanting a white velvet suit with black satin trimming and a black velvet suit with white satin.  Neither suit materialized, but he got some rather Liberace-esque costume jewelry and a turquoise silk scarf.  My mother “did” his voice, which was rather petulant and greedy, but I knew the truth: no matter what he “said,” he was selfless and generous to a fault.  He would do anything for me.  True love commands that degree of devotion.

My mother had told me about her childhood teddy bear, Tiddy, about how she had kept him but that he died before I was born, at my brother’s toddler hands.eHHhh  (You just can’t trust older brothers with your beloved…)  I vowed that I would never get rid of Pandle, and I never have.  He went to Maine on family vacations, and to Bermuda with me and my mother.  He went to London with me — more than once — to college, grad school, and law school, and once even to the movies.  (I decline to say how old I was when I stuffed him in a carrier bag and smuggled him into a tiny London cinema to see one of the retellings of Cinderella.  Let’s just say I was too old for such nonsense and leave it at that.)

When I think about it now, after seeing Toy Story 3, I realize that all my favorite romance novels evoke that feeling when I saw Pandle but feared I wouldn’t be allowed to keep him.  Requited love that might be ripped away in the next moment: pure angst!  Of course, happy endings don’t fix everything.  None of my childhood problems were solved by having Pandle with me, but they were all a lot more (sorry) bearable.  And we’re still living Happily Ever After.

Pandle today, somewhere in his late 50s or early 60s.

Tagged as: Guest Post, Magdalen. Pandle