On Reading "The House at Pooh Corner"

A few days before Thanksgiving, I finished reading The House at Pooh Corner for the first time. I don’t remember being read to very much as a child, which may simply be a gap in my memory. My mother, who left school in 10th grade, wasn’t a big reader, so that makes sense; my father took us to the bookmobile that came to our neighborhood Monday evenings, and he’d read mostly biographies and sports books, and I inherited a few books that he owned as a child, but I just don’t remember him reading to me. Anyway, I’ve been dipping into classic children’s books lately to fill in the gaps.

My one encounter with Winnie the Pooh was in kindergarten when my teacher decided to read a few stories to us. We all gathered around her to listen, but I am ashamed to say that every time she said the name “Pooh” or “Pooh Bear,” I would started giggling uncontrollably and nudging my fellow kindergartners until she finally had had enough and closed the book in frustration. I still feel embarrassed about that.

Anyway, my wife had recently reread The House at Pooh Corner herself (she’d read it often to the boys when they were little), and she encouraged me to read it when she was finished.

The thing that stands out about reading that book now that I am 67 is the leisurely, casual way of living in which Pooh and his friends didn’t have play dates and organized activities, but got up in the morning and just wandered around until something occurred to them. Sometimes, it was a simple as going to visit everyone to wish them a happy Thursday, and that was enough. I also really felt the closeness of that little community, who, while they sometimes unthinkingly did things that bordered on cruelty, mostly spent their days helping each other with something or other, and sharing a Little Something, and wandering through the woods. They took time to listen to each other, and overlooked their friend’s peccadilloes (“Well, that’s just Eeyore”), and made up little songs.

Which is why the final chapter, “In Which Christopher Robin and Pooh Come to an Enchanted Place, and We Leave Them There,” hit me so hard. The first sentence announced “Christopher Robin was going away.” In earlier chapters, the animals figured out that Christopher wasn’t around mornings anymore because he was spending them at school, and apparently he would be going to school all day now, and may even be going away to school. The group of animal friends came together and decided to find Christopher to say goodbye, and Eeyore has written a poem that he was going to read to him. Eeyore found the writing much more difficult than he expected, and yet the difficulty of saying goodbye permeates all the gaps and frustrations:

Christopher Robin is going.

At least we think he is.

Where?

Nobody knows.

But he is going–

I mean he goes

(To rhyme with ‘knows’)

Do we care?

(To rhyme with ‘where’)

We do

Very much.

(I haven’t got a rhyme for that ‘is’ in the second line yet. Bother.)

(Now I haven’t got a rhyme for bother. Bother.)

Those two bothers will have

to rhyme with each other

Buther.

The fact is this is more difficult

than I thought,

I ought–

(Very good indeed) I ought

To begin again,

But it is easier

To stop.

Christopher Robin, good-bye,

I

(Good)

I

And all your friends

Sends–

I mean all your friend

Send–

(Very awkward this, it keeps going wrong)

Well, anyhow, we send

Our love.

END.

By this point, I was a puddle. Good-byes make me a mess.

They all went and delivered the poem to Christopher, except Eeyore couldn’t quite get it said, and so he gave the letter to Christopher so that he could read it himself, and by the time he was finished only Pooh remained behind. “It’s a comforting thing to have,” Christopher Robin said. And then he asked Pooh to walk with him. Where? Nowhere.

They walked for a while in silence, and then Christopher Robin asked Pooh what he likes to do best in the world. Pooh thought and finally said “What I like best in the whole world is Me and Piglet going to see You, and You saying ‘Well, what about a little something?’ and Me saying, ‘Well, I shouldn’t mind a little something, should you, Piglet,’ and it being a hummy sort of day outside, and birds singing.”

Christopher agreed, and said that his favorite thing was doing Nothing.

Pooh asks him how you do Nothing, and Christopher replied “Well, it’s when people call out at you just as you’re going off to do it, What are you going to do, Chirstopher Robin, and you say, Oh, nothing, and then you go and do it…It means just going along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

He then, suddenly,he starts blurting out all the things he’s learned at kindergarten, and I became aware that he was thinking about his future, and what he was leaving behind. “And by-and-by Christopher Robin came to any end of the things, and was silent, and he sat there looking out over the world, and wishing it wouldn’t stop.”

They hang out a little longer in the Galleons Lap – did I mention they’d walked to the Galleons Lap at the top of the Forest, an enchanted place where they can look out over the landscape – and Christopher makes Pooh a Knight. And then:

“Then, suddenly again, Christopher Robin, who was still looking at the world, with his chin in his hands, called out, ‘Pooh!’'

‘Yes?’ said Pooh”

‘When I’m–when—-Pooh!’

‘Yes, Christopher Robin?’

‘I’m not going to do Nothing anymore.’

‘Never again?’

‘Well, not so much. They won’t let you.'"

I’m pretty sure that last sentence will stay with me for a long time. I think of it as The Lament of Adulthood, the realization of what being a Grownup means. And it isn’t until you’re my age when, once again, they “let you.”

But after all the years of adulting, I’ve found it difficult to remember how to do Nothing. It takes time, or at least it has for me.

In the five years since I retired, I’ve written or edited five books. The voice in my head keeps pushing me to share the thoughts I had when I was too busy to write them down. And I’m glad I wrote them. But maybe it’s time to relearn how to “just go along, listening to all the things you can’t hear, and not bothering.”

Because the only one not letting me now…is me.