The Bear Who Knows Too Much

The Bear Who Knows Too Much

In the looking-glass reality of our Home, time flows differently, but Bear counts it flawlessly. He is in his twenty-third year.

He appeared here even before this world was filled with the first cry of the long-awaited second son. Bear was taken from a glass shelf at the Mothercare shop — a place that smells of fresh fabric, baby powder, and the absolute, ringing anticipation of happiness. You could say he remembers this boy even before his official arrival into the world. Mum and Dad brought him home to keep the place warm for the future human. And Bear delivered.

For the last fourteen years, he has held his strategically important post — sleeping on this teal chaise longue brought straight from Covent Garden. Contrary to the laws of time, the chaise longue does not smell of passing centuries. It smells of pure lavender. Mum has her own “syndrome” too — carefully washing, preserving, and protecting every single detail of this space. Her drive for perfect cleanliness and order used to be incredibly intense. But over the last three years, Mum was finally able to let it go — either a truce was reached in this endless battle, or the heavy, tectonic shifts of the vast world bent her spirit just a little. Bear sees this and now treasures the lavender peace even more.

From a plush guardian of the infant cradle, he has subtly transformed into the Home’s chief philosopher. Bear reads a lot. But he thinks even more.

He thinks about people. About how strangely and quickly children grow up. One moment you are propping up a tiny heel with your soft sides, and the next, this boy is already looking at the world from the height of an adult. Bear sees how tenderly, through the years, Mum and Dad carry their love and never-ending worry for their sons. Bear knows: a parent’s heart does not know how to rest; it simply learns to beat in time with the children growing up.

He also thinks about nature and the weather. Bear has never seen the sea in his life. His button eyes have never reflected the salty azure. Yet, he knows everything about the sea. The Home stands so close to the shore that at night, when the footsteps, the rustle of pages, and the breathing of the sleepers fade away, the room fills with the deep, rhythmic sigh of the tide. Bear has been listening to this sound for twenty-three years and is certain that the sea is also someone’s vast, living home.

And Bear from Mothercare is a certified expert on dogs. During his service in the HOME, there have been three of them. He remembers the noble Antoshka Silver Bell. And, of course, he remembers Malka. Malka was brought all the way from Cyprus because that very Human, for whom Bear once kept the cradle warm, cried for an entire week without a pause — begging to rescue the poor dog from a cramped pet shop enclosure. And when Malka was finally brought home, the boy cried for another week — but this time from sheer, boundless happiness. “Such people,” Bear thinks proudly, adjusting his invisible glasses. Such tender-hearted people, raised in this Home.

Now his peace is guarded by the third and last of the dogs, and her odd companion — a steampunk monkey, a beloved dog toy with a slightly mad but kind look in its cogwheel eyes.

Bear sits on his lavender chaise longue, turning the pages of a heavy volume, looking out at the sea beyond the window, at Mum grown wiser with age — still sharp, still swift, still setting everything around her in motion — and at Dad, who has become a steady, calm Lighthouse for that churning sea of hers. Bear looks at the boy, grown into a man, and thinks that the true story of this Home is not written in gadgets, but right here — in the warmth of lavender-scented rooms, in the murmur of waves, and in the hearts of people who know how to love so fiercely, and so faithfully.