Happy Birthday A.A. Milne, I Love Your Silly Old Bear

Dear A.A.,

Can I call you A.A.? I feel like I’ve known you for a very long time. Well, in a way I guess I have. You see, my oldest son, Cody (affectionately known as Bug to most), turned 16 last month… almost to the day of your birthday. He was supposed to be born on December 18th, but stubborn as he was, labor ground to a halt and he wound up being born on December 19, 1995. Why I’m telling you this, I don’t know, I guess I feel like we have some sort of a connection in that way. Though I know that our real connection isn’t through birthdays but from the creation of your son’s dear friend, Winnie the Pooh.

I’ve been in love with that silly old bear since I was a girl but it wasn’t until Cody came along that I really got to know him and how much he would shape me as a mom, and us as a new family.

A boy and his bear courtesty of just-pooh.com

You see, Pooh, Christopher Robin, Eeyore, Piglet, Rabbit, Tigger, and Kanga helped me make it through many sleepless nights with a squaling baby and those first couple of years of motherhood.

Pooh gave me patience and taught me that “oh bother” was a much better choice of words around a toddler than any other words running through my head when things got tough. Eeyore reminded me just how bad things could get (and that someone else, usually him, has it harder). Kanga was my guiding light; a soft voice, a  good ear for listening, and a lesson that Mothers. Always. Worry. Piglet taught me that wonderful things come in small packages and Rabbit showed me that with great care and tending, you could grow something (or someone) wonderful. Tigger is a master of misguided michief and showed me that sometimes fun needs to be made, not found.

In 1994, the year my husband Brian, and I started dating, I heard a little song by one of my favorite artists, Kenny Loggins. It was right before I was due to fly to Orlando for the weekend to see Brian. I instantly fell in love with the song, the lyrics, and its meaning but at the time I didn’t understand why.

When I learned I was pregnant with a boy, my own son, I rushed to by the album (okay it was a cassette tape). I played it over and over for my growing belly on Brian’s vintage 1970 something headphones. The ear pieces swallowed up my belly at first but as my pregnancy progressed, I stretched the ear pieces over my swelling stomach. I read Psych 101 book and sang Return to Pooh Corner to the life growing inside of me.

When I was admitted to the hospital and ordered to bedrest, I didn’t have the cassette with me so I hummed and sang the song from memory for 5 long weeks until I could meet my son.

It had become, our song. 

Cody’s nursery was decked out in Winnie the Pooh bedding and large wooden cut outs of Pooh, Tigger, Eeyore, and Piglet hung on the wall next above his crib. His mobile tinkled out “Deep in the hundred acre wood… where Christopher Robin plays…” As I laid my son in his crib every night, I’d wind the mobile and sing, “Winnie the pooh. Winnie the pooh. Tubby little cubby all stuffed with fluff…” and watch him kick the mattress with his feet as if he was trying to get his musical friends to dance for him. On the window sill sat a Fisher Price cassette player (which made it through all four of our children) served as home to the Kenny Loggins cassette. Cody napped to it, every day, drowning out the sounds of the high schoolers cutting through our alley every afternoon at 2:30. My cousin, and Cody’s Godmother, Amanda gave us a boxed set of your books, four in all, as a gift for Cody before he was born. Long before Cody arrived, your characters were becoming a part of our family and our friends, as much as they were Christopher Robin’s.

I know, Pooh and his friends were written for all of us and not for your son, but the gift they have given; that you have given to generations, cannot be measured in words. They are however, measured in the inflection of a mother’s voice when she sings about Tigger, or the giggle in a child’s voice as he is read for the hundredth time how Pooh has gotten himself stuck. Again. It is measured in an artist’s song and the humming a mother does as she paces the floor with sleepy boy or as she sits and nurses her infant and strokes his cheek with her hand, marveling in the softness of his skin and the length of his eyelashes.

Television shows, videos, and movies have come from your stories. Cody’s first friends were Pooh and his friends. We learned that when we’d get stuck, we “think. think. think.” When we fell down we bounced like Tigger. There was nothing we couldn’t solve with a little bit of knowledge from Winnie the Pooh.

I know that there are so many other people or even companies that I could express my gratitude to for Winnie the Pooh and his friends, but without you – none of those creations would have ever existed.

Thank you, so very, very much for giving my first child, my baby, a character that was good and kind to everyone around him; who was curious and helpful, innocent and brave. Thank you for giving our family one of the best friends a child could ever ask for.

About Nichole Smith

Nichole Smith has written 547 posts on The Guilty Parent.

Founder of The Guilty Parent and Chaos in the Country (now part of The Guilty Parent), Nichole is a writer, blogger, social media strategist, wife to one, mother to four and embracer of mommy guilt.

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