taking the class bear home Archives - Circles in the SandCircles in the Sand

My DH took the children away last week. I couldn’t go because of work, so I (rather forlornly) waved them off to Beirut, where their grandparents live.

It was the first time I’d had to ‘let the boys go’, and I felt strangely untethered, as though gravity had disappeared – until I rediscovered how much extra time there is when you’re the only person in the house (things stay exactly where you leave them, it’s crazy!)

Our nanny did the children’s packing, but when I got home from work, DH was doing some pruning.

Don’t forget their toothbrushes – and the class gorilla! (hehe)

Now, when I pack the cases, I’m pretty thorough. If we got stuck on a desert island, we could be self-sufficient thanks to my packing (which is sometimes, I admit, excessive – but then I’ve got nearly nine years’ of experience of travelling with children who create laundry like nobody’s business).

Men, I’ve realised, view packing quite differently. DH had thrown out several T-shirts; when I tried to put baseball caps in, I had to argue their case; and as for taking suntan lotion, you’d think I was attempting to sneak a brick into the suitcase. (“There’ll be some there,” was DH’s viewpoint. “Just take it, in case,” I replied.)

So I did have to secretly smile when DH’s hand-luggage only plans were stymied by the class bear. The mascot is actually a gorilla – at least a foot tall. As Son2 left school clutching the stuffed toy – hardly able to believe his luck that he was the first to take him away – DH must have groaned inwardly at the gorilla’s surprisingly large size.

At the back to school night, another dad had quipped, “If he’s excess baggage, he’s not going.” But, given the jet set life of a travelling toy in an international school, you just know that the class gorilla has probably scuba-dived in the Maldives; made it to Hong Kong Disneyland; not to mention enjoyed weekend trips to Oman and Turkey.

It was the moment Son2 had been waiting for since the beginning of the school year: The day he got to take Bernie, the class bear, home.

Bernie arrived at our house in a bag, with his scrapbook – a well-leafed diary documenting his time spent with the families in Son2’s class. The pages were filled with photos, hand-written stories, speech bubbles, decorative stamps, evidence of baking extravaganzas and even a bear-class boarding pass.

You wouldn’t believe how creative it gets.

Son2 and I browsed the book together. ‘Oh look, there’s Bernie parachuting into someone’s garden, ” I exclaimed, my wide-open eyes settling on a photo of the bear floating into the family’s backyard underneath a make-shift canopy. “And here he is ON SKIS, in France!”

Silently seeking attention

It got even better: Blow me down, but Bernie spent Christmas in Lapland. There were snaps of him playing in the snow, snuggled up in the log cabin and listening to music in his airplane seat. “Let’s take Bernie on a husky safari, then tonight, if we’re really lucky, we might get a shot of him gazing at the Aurora Borealis rolling across the sky,” I could almost hear the enthused parents telling their bemused children.

Our time with Bernie had much more of a homey feel. In the knowledge that on top of all the usual weekend chores, I had to find amusing things to do with a bear, I set up numerous photo opportunities – of Bernie reading books, cosy in his pyjamas, sitting on the kitchen table eating noodles and using his paws to scale the bunk bed ladder. In an inspired moment, he posed for a #nomakeupselfie.

I even remembered to take Bernie with us when we went to football, and in the car, took care to buckle him up in the back.

Son2 looked at me suspiciously as I fiddled around trying to secure the seat belt. It was a look that suggested he thought I’d lost my mind. “Mum, he’s just a toy, you know!” my 5YO reminded me, with a roll of his eyes and a casual glance in Bernie’s direction.