Friday, February 26, 2010

Bears 141 to 150

Tomorrow I am going to Stitches West at the Santa Clara Convention Center to deliver twenty teddy bears to Amy Berman, the founder of the Mother Bear Project. It has been two years since I bought the pattern at the Mother Bear Booth and knitted my first bear. I’ve given up counting stitches, counting rows, counting yarn balls bought and stuffing hauled home. But I’ve not given up counting bears – I’ve finished 160 since I began on February 24, 2008.

Most of the first one hundred bears I named for friends and family members who sponsored them; after that I no longer asked for donations and I named them after artists in various fields, and after some of my heroes. I’ve picked names from “Baby Names from around the World” and I have blindly pointed at names on my computer screen. This time I chose first names of Olympians – since I finished the last group while watching the Olympics. Apolo, Lindsey, Joannie, Shaun, Nodar - and some that are less familiar – Samir, Errol, Muhammad, Michi. I tried to have a little United Nations of names – athletes from. China, Russia, Ethiopia, Germany, USA, Canada, Jamaica, Pakistan, Georgia, Morocco etc. And, as always, I’ve knitted my best wishes and most hopeful thoughts into each bear.

There are times when sitting in the safety of my home, knitting, seems like a very small contribution to the survival of the children of the world. I should be a doctor. I should wipe the tears of a child in distress. I should bandage a broken leg in Haiti. But then I get an email from Amy. She sends a photograph of three little boys from South Africa. The tallest one carries a baby bottle and two teddy bears. I imagine that he is his brothers’ keeper. I see that one of the bears was knitted by me. The photograph moves me to tears. Poverty always makes me sad. And yet, there is strength in the posture of the oldest boy. And trust in the faces of the younger ones.
Suddenly I feel a connection. A grandmotherly connection. The bear’s name is Zuleika.











Bears 151 to 160