Stuffed animals are creatures of the soul.

“The Guys” (some of them). Photo by the author.

He said it and my heart melted.

For the usual reasons and one more.

The usual? My son is an only child and has been calling his posse his brothers and The Guys for years. He has insisted they are living beings and will not tolerate language from us that suggests otherwise. Because when he was three, he pressed the head of his number one sidekick, his go-to teddy bear, to his forehead and looked straight into the bear’s eyes. In his sweet, openhearted voice he asked: “Are you in there?”

But now he’s 11 and he budged. Rather than backtrack any past statements about the aliveness of his stuffed crew, he reframed it recently: Stuffed animals are creatures of the soul.

Enough said.