An Adventure in Parenting

I want to thank my friend, Cece Doucette, for this post.

One day, Cece told me about the time Adventure Bear came home from preschool with her daughter, Zoe, to sleep over for a few days. One day, Zoe was playing with Mr. Bear in the leaf pile… and forgot… and Daddy mulched him!

I cannot resist sharing this story about the power of love and astounding creativity.

The Real Adventures of Adventure Bear!

December 5, 1998

Today Zoe came home from school with great excitement. She had a little canvas tote bag containing a small teddy bear and a journal. Adventure Bear had come to stay the weekend with us!

Zoe introduced Adventure Bear to her baby sister Julia in the car. Throughout the weekend he helped us with our holiday preparations. He helped put the stamps on our Christmas cards, came with us to pick out a tree, and even wrote a letter to Santa!
(Poor Zoe though, when she and Daddy put the letters in Santa's mailbox at the library, she stepped in dog poop for the first time! They came back into the truck and I asked if someone had bad gas. Neither of them did, so I said, "Someone stepped in dog poop!" Sure enough, it was on the bottom of Zoe's shoes. We took them off and threw them into the back of my truck. Zoe was so mortified she started to cry! But Daddy cleaned them off the next day and I put them through the washing machine. All was well!)

Back to Adventure Bear… Daddy was working out in the yard, and Julia and I went down for a nap. Zoe said she wanted to stay outside with Daddy. She and Adventure Bear played in the yard, and after a while I heard her come into her room for a nap too.
I woke up and got ready to go to the Ashland tree lighting ceremony. I told Daddy it was time to go. He said he'd lost track of time and wanted to mulch some leaves he'd put into a pile up front, before it got dark. He had waited until we woke from our naps so as not to disturb us.

Meanwhile, I went upstairs and woke up Zoe. She got ready too, then in a panic remembered she'd lost Adventure Bear in the pile of leaves. As she's telling me this, I'm hearing the mower mulching leaves out front! I slipped out to the porch, and there on the corner of the deck was part of Adventure Bear's head! The nose was hanging off, ragged stuffing was popping out and both ears were gone!

Daddy just looked at me and said the head flew out of the mower. Well, we had to get going, so I went back into the house. Zoe asked if I'd found Adventure Bear. I told her we needed to leave for the tree lighting ceremony and assured her that I'd find him later.

Meanwhile, Daddy and I were in a panic. Adventure Bear had been mulched! How do you explain that to a three-year-old, and all of her classmates? Not to mention the teachers… However, it looked like most of the pieces came apart at the seams, so perhaps there was some hope for recovery and repair.

At the tree lighting, Daddy confessed that Zoe had asked him to help her find Adventure Bear before her nap. He was caught up in what he was doing and didn't remember to help her look for him… a terrible way to learn a lesson in listening.
After we got Zoe to bed, I asked Daddy to walk me through the scene of the crime. With a flashlight, he showed me where the pile of leaves had been, where the head came flying out, and where he'd dumped several loads of mulched leaves in the backyard. We ran our hands through the mulch and Daddy found a big clump that had been the body. It was in rough shape.

Daddy had to put his tools away and clean up some stuff in the yard, so I continued to search with a flashlight. Fortunately, we were having Indian summer so the air was mild. After much sifting, I recovered one ear, then the other, and the little red ribbon that was around Adventure Bear's neck. The only thing still missing was one arm. Daddy went back out and looked again, three times through the mulch piles, but couldn't find it.

I took a picture of the damage for posterity, then spent the rest of the evening reconstructing Adventure Bear on the couch with a needle and thread. As the damage was pretty extensive, Daddy was afraid Adventure Bear would look like Frankenstein when I was done. First I reattached the nose, then both ears, and stitched up the back of his head. The head actually looked pretty good -- Daddy is lucky to have married a gal who can sew!

The body was another story. There were a number of rips that weren't on the seams. But one by one , I fixed the boo-boos. If we could only find the missing arm!
Daddy came downstairs with two other brown stuffed animals, wondering if we could do a transplant. The furs were different shades of brown, so I suggested we hold off until we look for Adventure Bear's arm in daylight.

Zoe asked for Adventure Bear in the morning and I told her we had to get ready for school. I promised to look for him that afternoon. I said he was playing a really good game of hide-and seek. She thought that sounded fun!

After I brought Zoe to school I grabbed the rake and sifted through the mulch again, to no avail. I finally gave up as Julia was in the truck and I didn't want to leave her alone, and I had to get to my six-week postpartum checkup. I brought Adventure Bear and his journal with me. There was a picture of Adventure Bear and Max in the journal, and I hoped that perhaps I could find an identical bear in a store somewhere. I stopped into 135 Discount and CVS but there were no like bears and none of the other stuffed animals had matching fur.

After I picked Zoe up from school we went to the library. She asked if I'd found Adventure Bear. I said yes, and left it at that. She asked for him again when we got home, and I distracted her. After I put her to bed, I heard her calling me. She wanted to sleep with Adventure Bear! We told her Adventure Bear needed to be cleaned. Then Daddy cuddled with her in bed and pretended to be Adventure Bear.
I needed one more day to see if the Fabric Place had a matching piece of fur from which I could whittle out a little arm. Well, the Fabric Place didn't have what we needed, nor did JoAnne Fabrics or A.C. More. But Toys R' Us had another little teddy with matching fur J.

With Julia in my arms, I did a fur graft from the new teddy bear's back to Adventure Bear's front. I patched in a new piece on his belly and created a right arm. Julia was getting impatient, but I managed to reattach the head to the body. Then I washed and ironed the red ribbon and stitched it back around his neck. By the time I picked Zoe up from school, the reconstructive surgery was complete! She was so happy to see Adventure Bear peer over the seat at her!

Zoe's always asking me to "tell a story from your mouth, Mommy" – as opposed to out of a book. So, that evening, as Daddy was coming in the house, I said, "I've got a story to tell you, Zoe…Once upon a time there was a little girl who brought home from school a little teddy bear and his journal…" I went on to relay the adventure, and her eyes were wide with amazement. As were her Daddy's when he saw Adventure Bear put back together!