Last week in this space I extolled friends, specifically those with whom I share a national church-linked existence. They are wonderful people. I place a high value on their friendship.

But, returning from the church convention in Massachusetts, I came back to my first friend: Teddy. 

#

Teddy is a bear, seeing his eighty-first summer. He gazes from the dresser top as I do my daily exercises. His chubby legs are splayed just right to support his body, his stubby arms akimbo, black eyes glittering, tongue vacant. 

He stares at me. I know I must complete all my twists and turns and arm swings, because I’d hate to let Teddy down. 

He was my first friend; I do not remember a time before Teddy. We’ve been together more than fourscore years. 

I don’t know what he looked like when I first met him. In my first memories, he was already worn and bedraggled. Mom told me that he once had a flapping tongue made of red felt. I must have torn it off somehow, for he now sports only a small red dot where his mouth should be. Without a real tongue, how can he speak?

Sphinx-like, he looks on from the top of the dresser. Silence is his superpower.

What he lacks in loquacity, Ted makes up in loyalty—a key virtue in a friend. Over the past eighty years, I’ve done many stupid things, manifested many weaknesses, harbored petty grudges and neurotic insecurities. Teddy has seen it all. It would be only natural if he held me in low esteem. But, like the best of friends, he never says a word.

Teddy seems content to have watched my evolution from a brash and conflicted child to a wise, if decrepit, old man. He, on the other hand, never changes.

One day I will shuffle off to my next stop on the way to Eternity. I’ll leave behind friends and lovers, child and grandchildren . . .

. . . and Teddy, the only one who has seen it all.

And he’s not talking.

Blessings,

Larry F. Sommers

Your New Favorite Writer