Many years ago, my dad found an old teddy bear in with the stuff that remained after I left home. He dressed it his old baseball uniform, the shirt worn on his station’s ball team. Dad loved playing baseball and told me about the teams he had been on throughout his career – apparently Montreal had enough broadcasting stations with teams that tournaments were formed (think the Anchorman brawl, with fewer moustaches and more outs). Dad tried to instill that love of baseball in me, but failed miserably: turns out there is actually a LOT of crying in baseball. Anyway, dad loved baseball and dressed a teddy bear his jersey and the bear had a place of honour in the home for many years.

After my dad died, my mom kept it (.. because hoarding runs in the family, and we keep everything) and when she sold the house to move to her current weird ass-home, the bear came with. It retained a place of honour: the lounge chair in the living room. That’s the bear’s/cat’s chair.

Dad passed in 2005, and mom’s been in her apartment since .. 2007? 2008? A long time. Bear’s still there. We hung out in December.

I’m 3 months deep in a massive archaeological dig, and recently unearthed a huge teddy bear Ed had given me early in our relationship. I hadn’t decided what to do with it, so it hung out in the femur-sized pile of things in limbo: I needed to Deal with These, just .. later.

That said, today did start with a treasure hunt for a picture of a girl in a martini glass. We’re 6/7 in the quest when I found trove (look, this is pirate-themed now): yearbooks! amazing shoes! a single crystalline rose suspended in time! baby witch gear! copies of doom and doom II on floppy disk! an old t-shirt of my dad’s!

I think you can see where this might be going:

The shirt I unearthed was dad’s team shirt from his station in Victoria. I had claimed it after dad died, and stashed it away on a shelf I couldn’t reach.

Say hi to Bear next time you visit #halfwack.

I am exhausted from all of these feelings and onions.