Maybe It's the Fever ...

Wrig and I have spent the last 20 days or so reading Winnie-the-Pooh at bedtime - a chapter a night. My brain is so filled with the garrish Disney versions that I'd forgotten how wonderful those original stories are. Milne is funny and sophisticated and wise about childhood and utterly brilliant about the art of writing and I could go on and on ... Wrig's been really excited about the whole process. I think the stories are a little over her head but she really likes snuggling in to listen and when we're done she always asks ...

W: What are we going to read tomorrow?
D: Chapter IX: In Which Eeyore Finds the Wolery and Owl Moves In.
W: What's a wolery?
D: We'll have to read it tomorrow to find out!

Anyway. Wrig is sick today, in that helpless, feverish way only little kids (and daddies!) can be sick. She's been cuddly and fragile all evening. I know they always talk about Mama bears, but there is something that happens inside me when Wrig is sick. Defensive isn't quite the right word - I think it's protective. When she's sick, I just want to hug her and squeeze her and hang on to her nonstop.

So we curl up in bed to read Pooh Bear. We happen to be on the last chapter. Christopher Robin is leaving the forest; everybody knows it but they don't know where he is going or even how they know that he is leaving in the first place. Christopher Robin and Pooh Bear wander off alone to an Enchanted Place to say good-bye without knowing how to say good-bye. It's heartbreaking.

And when you read it for the first time in a long time, with your sick daughter tucked into your armpit, and you realize for a split second how fragile everything is, that last chapter of Pooh Bear just might be the saddest thing in the world.