If you squint, you can just about see our beloved TIFD (This Is Fine Dog) plushie on the sofa.
A note before we start: earlier this month, I reached 100 subscribers on here. I’m so excited that so many people want to read my musings on home and belonging, and am so thankful to everyone who’s read, subscribed, shared the newsletter, bought me a kofi, and told me the writing has resonated. It means a lot to me. Thank you.
This issue contains gameplay spoilers for the games ‘Unpacking’ (Witch beam Games) and ‘It Takes Two’ (Hazelight Studios).
There’s a universal truth, I think, when it comes to cuddly toys, that no matter how unlikely it is that they are sentient in the same way as we are, they are, in some sense, alive. We need them to be. We need the idea, or illusion, that they reciprocate our love and that the comfort they bring us is not just imagined. This is how I felt about Bunny, my handknit companion from the age of three, a strange fellow who didn’t much resemble a rabbit at all with his upright position and white shorts. Bunny followed me from childhood through to early adulthood. He joined me on plane journeys in my early twenties as I worked to overcome a difficult period of anxiety that manifested as a fear of flying. He was alive with my love and the comfort I derived from his long-standing presence.
And then, packing for a house move in 2018, I put him in a black bag and tipped him into the bin outside.
This sounds more unceremonious than it was (although that could just be my still-strong guilt talking). I took a photo of him beforehand to remember him by. I cried, a lot. When I try to make sense of the decision in hindsight, it feels as though it was maybe an act of love. He’d spent the last while stuffed in a storage box and had become moth-bitten, no life for a cuddly toy. It felt like he’d reached full capacity of what he could give me, and the best place for him to exist going forward would be in my heart.
It’s a decision I quite deeply regret, a memory I can’t linger on too long without feeling something break inside me. Something comes over me when it’s time to leave one place and move to another; I become gripped by this drive to strip myself back, to mercilessly shed things for which I feel like I might not have metaphorical space for in the next chapter. I hope that our current home is our last, but if it isn’t, I’ve learnt the hard way to think twice about what I choose to let go.
It’s hard for art and media to authentically capture the meaning of cuddly toys, the way we look to them for a sense of belonging and normality, creating of them little anchors, little homes. It’s not, I don’t think, a subject we explore very deeply as adults; in our society that values and promotes the neglect of the inner child, we don’t usually admit to having beloved inanimate companions past childhood. Playing Unpacking earlier this year, I was instantly charmed by the beautiful pixel art, satisfying sound effects and generally very calming process of unboxing the protagonist’s belongings across several different moves (if only it were like that in real life). As they navigated different stages of life–leaving home, life on campus, that terrible boyfriend whose sterile apartment left no space for the protagonist’s prized diploma–I got to know the items that held meaning, that held home. I tapped and held the buttons on the control pad and arranged books, clothes, games and other personal effects in the spots that made most sense logistically and emotionally, as I have done four times since leaving my own childhood home. I placed the character’s beloved plushies in a neat row on the bed, or facing each other (achievement unlocked!), until, in the final home, I positioned the adorable Pig on the cot in the nursery.
Here I paused the game, because I was kind of crying inconsolably. Because cuddly toys can be mementos that connect one generation to the next, a piece of home–security, comfort, familiarity–entrusted from one person to another. My mother jokes about it now, but I think she still harbours some sadness over the Kermit and Scooter cuddlies she bestowed upon my sister and I, only for us (we were toddlers, to be fair) to forget them in the park one day, never to be seen again.
Unpacking is not the only game I’ve had to pause while I contend with an emotional breakdown: in co-op platformer It Takes Two, the players are forced to undertake what is probably the most uncomfortable task* I’ve been faced with in any game: the ripping apart, limb from limb, of a syrup-sweet toy elephant named Cutie. In interviews, studio founder Joseph Fares was wholly unrepentant about this shocking scene. It is, after all, justified by the story: two parents whose child’s sadness has been overshadowed in their failing marriage, who can no longer see the damage they’re causing. Cutie’s demise is a turning point in the game, a cuddly-toy inspired crossroads from where things can only get better.
Other cuddly toys have come and gone over the years, lost to disrepair or to the strange black hole that claims a small number of our things every time we move house like some sort of trade to maintain order in the universe. Now, I think of Bunny as a home I once lived in, a place I moved through with the thoughts, preferences, experiences, fears that defined that time of my life. No home, not even the one we don’t leave, is forever, but in each one of mine there’s been a curated corner–a sofa, or shelf, or arrangement of pictures attached to the wall with 3M strips–of comfort, a spot or object that was, unmistakably, home. A place that will live in my heart and memories long after I’ve left it.
I’d love to hear about your beloved cuddly toys–tell me about them in the comments!
*apart from, maybe, deleting my first Animal Crossing island and all its inhabitants. That was a real doozy.
The Bookshelf
In this section of Home Comforts, I share a reading recommendation for a book or piece of writing that touches on themes of home.
In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Around two-thirds of the way through this genre-defying memoir highlighting domestic abuse in queer relationships, the reader is invited into the pages for a Choose Your Own Adventure experience. I never read the gamebooks that were popular in the 80s and 90s, but I’ve played many a choice-based video game in my time. Here, the format is used to immersive effect to demonstrate the removal of agency and inevitable outcomes often experienced by those in abusive relationships. The concept of the ‘dream house’ is used throughout to explore and critique various stereotypes, expectations and cultural phenomena, all the while deconstructing the ‘home’ of love so many of us long to build around ourselves. Machado is a writer whose work always stays with me, and this hard-hitting memoir was no different.
Do you have a recommendation I might like? If so, I’d love to hear from you!
My short story collection, Tools For Surviving A Storm, is out now.
‘In a transporting, original collection, Nadia Henderson examines the lines between nature and the human world through stories set in landscapes both brutal and beautiful.’
This is such a beautiful & poignant read...I think my regrets over the loss of Kermit & Scooter were mainly due to your attachment to Kermit as a small child...you may recall that he went everywhere with you, tucked under your arm in nursery school, with you constantly flicking one of his arms as if to include him in all of your experiences. No doubt he was a great source of comfort & security for you, my sweet four year old Nadia; wherever you went, Kermit did too.
Just a couple of years ago I discovered my childhood teddy bear packed away in an old suitcase in the garage of my parents home, as it was being cleared for sale. In remarkably good condition I was thrilled to see him...one of my favourite childhood pics is of me cuddling this teddy when I am about 18 months old...he now has pride of place in this 61 year old's bedroom...naturally!
I have a teddy, called Tedwood (it was supposed to be Tedward, but I always pronounced it like "wood") that either my nan or great-aunt (I'm ashamed that I can't remember who right now) gave my Mum before I was born. He's currently in a box in the cupboard, and I'm now desperately hoping he's not covered in mould like so many other things have been in this damp house. I'm going to have to check, but I'm also scared in case he's mouldy.
I absolutely thought my teddies were all sentient. I used to imagine what they'd get up to while I was at school or staying over at my Nan's house.