Rare Bear

I don’t remember exactly when I first had the pleasure of meeting Winnie the Pooh but I do remember when he became more than just a character in a children’s book. Sometime after the birth of our first child, Pooh became a member of the family and his adventures became favorite bed time reading stories. In fact, Pooh was so popular at various times throughout our family’s history that it was completely unnecessary to wait until evening to enjoy the camaraderie of Piglet, Owl, Rabbit, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga, Roo and, of course, Christopher Robin: we could tell stories of Pooh bear at any hour of the day.

I’ll never forget reading lines from one of Christopher Robin’s poems as almost a family right of passage when a child’s age would pass beyond that mystical time when each year could be represented by the fingers on a single hand:

Now we are six,
And we’re better than ever.
I think we’ll stay six,
For ever and ever.

Although all of our children are now well past that enchanting age of six, the memories of those days imagining the Hundred Acre woods were just outside our door are so precious that they dwarf the $26,000 being charged by a rare book dealer for the honor of owning a set of original first editions of the Winnie the Pooh books in excellent condition, encased in dust jackets, whose advertisement appeared on the back page of the New York Times Sunday Review of Books just last week. I would never trade.

“If ever there is tomorrow when we're not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we're apart.. i'll always be with you.”

@ 2007 Joseph Ricciardi Jr