Polk and Pooh - Friends Forever

 

This tattered and much loved Pooh bear has been with me for more than 4 decades. Through a mostly idyllic childhood to the troubled teen years, marriages, divorce, drugs and alcohol abuse and my recent redemption to this very moment, he has been there always. I experience life as it happens, but often wax nostalgic for a time when it wasn't about bills, problems and work. When life was about playing, imagining the impossible and thinking of a future where life continued at a dream like state long into adulthood.

  Why carry a stuffed bear from house to house, life to life? How did this little fellow manage to never get lost amongst my drunken stumbles and wanderings? I guess it's just my dumb luck that this one touchstone to where I came from and who I always thought I could be still remains by my side every day.
  Or maybe he's here because I need him.

  I had imaginary friends as a kid and while they have faded into memory and tales better told by those who found them amusing, I know Winnie was there. Troubled as a kid meant internalizing the monologue and talking to myself to figure out what was going on, something I continue to do as an adult, only now we call it Twitter.
  I had many conversations that seemed all too real with this tiny stuffed bear and as I moved through life, he came along for each ride. Sometimes stuffed in a box and not seeing the light of day for months, more often on a shelf somewhere close by so I could see him for reassurance when I got low, Pooh just sort of exists in my mind as the one thing I have that holds all those secrets, dreams and hopes in his fading plush stuffiness.

  Seeing the new Christopher Robin movie last week brought all of this back to the forefront of my mind as I sat in a darkened theatre, tears welling and laughter spilling forth at all my favourite characters coming to life once more. The achingly hard scene where Pooh wonders if Christopher Robin had forgotten him too nearly did me in as I remembered leaving behind the things of childhood and rushing headlong into work and being a Woozle. At times a touch sugary, it nevertheless captured what the pressure of what our focus becomes as we chase the dream of more things while missing the really important stuff we keep putting off to make a buck. Tigger's frantic bouncing and exuberance, Piglet's worrying and my other favourite A.A. Milne character, Eeyore giving voice to those days we don't feel so good all exist in this universe as they did in my mind and for that I am grateful. 
  That I cried at so many points in this movie has everything to do with what this little bear brought to me in his many different forms over the years. I will long carry the lessons of friendship, the value of doing nothing and staying true to who you are with me as I continue to try and find my own Hundred Acre Woods to hang out with my pal Pooh and all my other friends.