Lost Stories / Advent Day 2

What do I mean, the good stories get lost?

Marin, Teo and I went down to "Little Anchorage" or "Fanchorage" ("Fairbanks + Anchorage) to the Barnes and Noble to see if they had the Pooh book of Nursery Rhymes, which we found at the Library and which he’s crazy about and just now. It was about zero degrees out, and windy, so we parked right up front (next to an Odyssey, but that was last week), at which point Marin exclaimed, "We’re in Denver!"

It was true, it totally felt "Not Like Fairbanks" to be parking in the light of a big-box, light-streaming-from-plate-glass-windows bookstore.

Inside, Matteo made a beeline for the Thomas-the-Train platform to push (hopefully, unleaded) trains a little. Marin lingered surreptitiously to try to locate Christmas presents based on Pooh. We found little of what we came for, with the exception of a bunch of Alaskana picture books we weren’t going to buy, one about kids and trapped beluga whales, one about kids refusing to sleep in the middle of an Alaska summer when it’s light all night, and so Marin read them to Teo while I trolled for more.

But nothing Disney-Pooh-esque. Marin sent me to scope out a sighting of Pooh-books on a distant shelf, and when I sat down in front of A.A. Milne’s originals, I couldn’t help but page through, instantly spellbound. I was transfixed not only by the utterly sweet (incomparably more appropriate than Disney’s more toddler-accessible) illustrations, but also by the flow of the story. I pulled out The House at Pooh Corner, and there began to read the final chapter:
"Christopher Robin was going away. Nobody knew why he was going; nobody knew where he was going; indeed, nobody even knew why he knew that Christopher Robin was going away. But somehow or other everybody in the Forest felt that it was happening at last." Reading this was riveting, after weeks of slaking Matteo’s thirst for bedtime stories which he requires include not some but all of the Pooh characters. That’s Pooh, Piglet, Rabbit, Eeyore, Owl, Kanga, Roo – do I have them all? Oops – Tigger! And I never take the time to plan ahead, lesson plans... I never seem to have imaginative – to my standards – made-up stories. I feel like I have been bequeathed a spectacular orchid plant (Matteo), but I always forget to mist it as I run out my front door to something else.

My mood shifted techtonically when I got to the climax I sought:

"(Christopher Robin and Pooh) walked on, thinking of This and That, and by-and-by they came to an enchanted place on the very top of the Forest called Galleons Lap, which is sixty-something trees in a circle; and Christopher Robin knew that it was enchanted because nobody had ever been able to count whether it was sixty-three or sixty-four, not even when he tied a piece of string round each tree after he had counted it. Being enchanted, its floor was not like the floor the Forest, gorse and bracken and heather, but close-set grass, quiet and smooth and green. It was the only place in the Forest where you could sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for some where else. Sitting there they could see the whole world spread out until it reached the sky, and whatever there was all the world over was with them in Galleons Lap."

Two dear people, Trip and Merrie, sweethearts during my freshman year at Yale and friends of mine, gave me that quote, and it was one of my anchors during college.

I can’t wait to read the books again when Teo’s a little older. But until then, I hope I can escape the prison of my mundane bedtime stories, like last night, when Pooh and Tigger were at the car dealership, wanting Teo (who was bored by his parents’ fixation on the salesman) to join them as they stole the van which was heating up outside, to drive them all over to Christopher Robin’s. Even Teo found that "over the top." When Pooh asked him if he wanted to go along, Matteo (narrated, in real time, into the flow of the tale) said, simply, "no."

"But it’s a party at Christopher Robin’s. Don’t you want to go with Pooh and Tigger to the party?"

"No." Hm. The good stories get lost.