Grandma Fern’s old fur coat isn’t in our closet any more. All through my childhood it hid in the back of the closet, except when we snuck it out to play dress up or were given permission to use it as part of a Halloween costume.
Once Hiram and I moved to Five Mile Drive and had extra closet space, Mom gave it to me. I was close to Grandma Fern’s size and build. On a good day I could squeeze into it, as long as it didn’t need to be buttoned. It was part of an occasional old lady costume at school or church, but the years were hard on it.
So last summer Mom and I took it to Karla McDowell, a teddy bear artist, who lives in Adel. She turned the old coat into four jointed bears which were Christmas presents to Fern’s great-grandchildren. (Grandma Fern has five great-grandchildren, but one is the monk. The monk who took a vow of poverty can’t accept a teddy bear. He gets homemade biscotti and shortbread instead.) The bears were a hit with the great-granddaughters. I’m not sure if great-grandson Ben, age 26, was thrilled to get a stuffed animal for Christmas, but he had the maturity to accept it gracefully.
The other day I was in my daughter’s room and saw her teddy bear on her dresser. It looks at home there, but it’s glittering glass-eyed stare drilled right through me. It made me think about Grandma Fern, who died the year before I was born, and the stories my parents told about her, especially when the old fur coat made an appearance.
Fern graduated from high school and taught school, unusual accomplishments for a woman of her time. She loved books, gave dramatic readings and sang with more gusto than skill at church. She loved to cook and invite her siblings and their families to their house for meals. She and Grandpa Cyril had a loving marriage. She was devoted to her only son, my dad, and accepted his bride as the daughter she never had. The only one of her grandchildren she met, my older sister, was the apple of her eye. Fern was the strength of her immediate and extended family. They never quite recovered when she died of colon cancer in her fifties.
I need to pass the stories of that remarkable woman on to her great-grandchildren. They should remember her for more than a teddy bear. I want them to know her as a person who loved them before they were born. I want them to delight in the legacy and family traits passed on to them through her love. My daughter’s bear, a visible reminder of her presence, and it’s glittering stare won’t let me hide or forget the stories.
I’d better get busy.
