Time Travel in the Repair Shop

In the Repair Shop today, I want to talk about an amazing phenomenon that I have witnessed numerous times. Time Travel. People will come into the shop with an item from their childhood, frequently a very well-loved stuffed animal, and it is up to “the Teddy Bear Ladies,” Julie and Amanda, to use their superpowers to restore it according to the wishes of its owner. Sometimes, that is a full-on, good-as-new repair job. More often, though, it is what they refer to as a sympathetic restoration. The owner wants their friend cleaned up, and made to feel less fragile, but the signs of wear and tear are signs of love and those should be preserved.

In The Velveteen Rabbit, the Skin Horse describes being “real” like this:

“Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”

That’s a perfect description of how so many of the toys come to Julie and Amanda. But it doesn’t matter. They handle them with the same tender care and delicate touch that you would handle a newborn baby. It can be a bit unsettling to watch them unstitch the seams and unstuff the body, gently soak the parts in a mild detergent and then line the original fur to give it strength to withstand more years of love. They may need to restitch a face or reattach eyes, make new clothes or replace an ear that has been loved off. But there is no doubt that they understand how real that toy is to the owner.

Many times, the owner of the well-loved toy is an elderly person, or someone who has suffered health challenges as a child, or it was a gift from a favorite elder who has passed. They are often embarrassed to admit they feel so much affection towards a toy, but they are never met with ridicule. The Teddy Bear ladies always reassure them they are not silly, their feelings are not ridiculous, and handle the owner’s emotions with the same love and compassion that they handled their “friend.” It is a lesson we could all learn – to treat each other with love and kindness and that our scars and wrinkles and gray hair and loose joints are all part of what makes us real. And in the eyes of God, we are just as beautiful and real as the day He created us.

When the owner returns to retrieve their friend, the emotion is overwhelming. You can see in their emotions they have traveled back to the day they first held them. No standing stones, no Tardis, no creation of science fiction; just the feel of a stuffed toy. All the secrets told to them, all the tears they have absorbed, all the comfort they have provided flood back in the memories that are so vivid it is obvious they are reliving those moments as if they were happening right then. It’s a beautiful thing to love a friend, whether real or imaginary, so much that just the feel of them can transport your heart back over decades to another time and place. To lose yourself, even for a moment, in a lifetime of memories by the simple act of cuddling a toy, is a journey we should all be so blessed to take.