When I was four years old, my parents went to Germany for a few days. When they came back they brought me what looked to me as the most beautiful, gigantic, exciting and wonderful teddy bear.
I could move his little tail to make him say “Yes” or “No” with his head. On his belly, as navel, he had a golden ring I could turn, as a key, and it made start carillon music.
It was first sight love!
The teddy bear could sing for me at nigh and I loved falling asleep listening to his belly carillon.
I asked him questions and I made him answer nodding his head.
I had to find a very special and suitable name for him and I wanted to make the right choice, I was a very consistent and determined child.
Then I had suddenly the right inspiration.
In the company where my father was employed, there was a very gentle Italian worker, a thin man, at that time he might be in his 40’s. He wore always a blue-collar kind of overall and a beret and he used a machine, like a conveyer belt, to carry special sands on trucks.
My mother took me to visit my father at his office and I like that, it was all so unusual for a little girl.
That thin Italian worker was so kind to me; he spoke little, but was full of patience and played with me in the courtyard of the factory.
I had with me my new teddy bear and I remember as if it was now that he put the teddy on the conveyer belt to amuse me, and the teddy bear went up as on a personal escalator and then I wanted to do it again and again and I was thrilled when I was allowed to push the button to make my teddy bear to go up by myself!
So the decision was easily taken and my teddy bear had his name.
MICHELE, after that kind Italian gentleman.
Many years have passed since then, I have moved many times and I have lost a lot of items, then I don’t like keeping boxes of old memories. I live in the present.
But Michele the teddy bear has always come with me and he still is.
Of course he got older too. One of his feet got moth-eaten and his head movement got stiff, but his belly carillon still plays well.
A few years ago I tried to find again Signor Michele, and I was successful. He was retired and looked always the same, with the same beret too.
He and his wife invited me to their home for dinner and they welcome me as if I had been a daughter or a grand daughter.
They lived in a small flat, perfectly clean and tidy and all full of the most incredible bric-a-brac, toys, dolls, plastic flowers…a kind of real little museum of kitsch, but also sweet, like an old fairy tale.
Since then I have written to them twice a year, they were both in their early 80’s and they obviously loved each other immensely, they had never had any children.
Signor Michele died last year.
This is just a little story of a gentle man, a former child and a teddy bear.

This photo is part of a gallery where I post my self-portraits.
You might click on this old camera


if you are brave enough to decide to see also the others.