Are you ready to switch off your screens and ponder or discuss another writing/conversation prompt during dinner tonight? You want to know about my thoughts on it? Here’s my take:
When was the last time you had a teddy bear tea time? I can’t remember when, but it happens every time I’m around some little girl who happens to own a doll tea set and some stuffed animals. It doesn’t have to be a teddy bear; it could be a duck, or an elephant, or even a dinosaur, for all it counts. The important thing is that it is pretend tea. I have never been invited to a teddy bear tea time that served real tea or real cookies. My cup was always empty; so was my plate. But you have to go through the motions and make it every bit as real as you can, in order to have a happy hostess.
I well remember MY very first teddy bear tea times, though. I was four when I had my tonsils removed, and when I returned home from a week’s hospital stay, a beautiful, doll-size china tea set was waiting for me, including a can, a saucer, and a sugar bowl; there were even cutlery, a small pot, and a baking mold, the latter two of them oven safe, as I’d find out later! It was kind of the Band-Aid for a week of homesickness and pain, and it came as an utter surprise. You see, I had never been the kind of kid to embrace playing with a doll or stuffed animals – I LOVED role play, drawing, and books instead. I was the one who turned over the nursery table and used it as a boat across the vast ocean of carpet, with orange slices for provision. I played “book store” with all my books set up on the window sill. I went “shopping” in the kitchen – a clever way to get scraps from the food prepping counter, come to think of it.
Well, my mother was wonderful to play along. And though she never participated in my tea times, she provided well for my tea times. The “house” under the nursery table had its own little table, a foot stool, that got covered with an old dishcloth my mother didn’t use any more. The “table” was set as I had seen my mother set hers. My can was filled with real tea, and for my guests (my brother and his stuffed animals), there surely were a cookie or two, as well. In short, my childhood teddy bear tea times were as real as they could be!
Unfortunately, I have no photos of either, the pretend tea times with friends’ little girls nor the very real ones from my childhood days. So, I went to this wonderful platform with loads of free images, where I found the above picture. It’s teddy bear tea time, too. But what a difference!
My husband came across me opening it.
“But they are all alone!” he exclaimed. “This is sad!”
“They are waiting for people who are alone,” I countered. “And they will be sitting with them while they are having tea. So, these people won’t feel alone.”
We both knew that it is all about pretense, but I made him smile, and that warmed my heart. Maybe as much as the idea of putting a quiet, stuffed pal into a chair to listen to a lone person’s outpour, to simply sit and be there. Sometimes, a teddy bear might make all the difference at tea time.
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