“Remember tonight
for it is the beginning
of always.”

DANTE ALIGHIERI

THE INFERNO

There was no need to check the corners in our house for demons. Mother’s dark shadow crept through the house without her. She told me trees ate naughty children who didn’t do as they were told and threatened to leave me in Jabbers Walk if I didn’t grow up.

When I was five, no-one knew I could speak, let alone read. But I was fluent in the language of odd ducks. I read pictures, shapes, colors, voices, and faces. My mother’s face told me I was a mistake. She secreted me behind closed doors, but one door wasn’t enough.

I endured Mother’s insults thrust upon me in the world I dubbed the Shadowland where every event foreshadowed inevitable suffering.

But between waking and sleeping I imagined colorful shapes dancing around me out of sight that vanished whenever I dared look, and the sweet music accompanying them stayed, consoling me for hours until I almost believed I was cherished.

One morning, I woke to the first of four events that changed my life. Threatening voices stormed for a long time, followed by a slamming door, and the next day I found a ‘tooth fairy’ book under my pillow.

I guarded it all day, and when it was dark I opened the door to ‘The House at Pooh Corner’. Inside was a summer’s day. A warm breeze heady with pine wafted my hair into a halo. Birdsong drew my attention to the mouth of a green tunnel leading into a comforting forest painted with fingers of sunlight. I ran into it and never looked back.

I would be remiss if I neglected to paint you an accurate mind picture, lest you envisage me left standing alone in a forest clearing of Christopher Robin’s Hundred-acre-Wood with a pile of stuffed toys to play with. It was nothing of the sort. Eeyore, Kanga, and Tigger were life-sized animals, but Pooh, Piglet, and Roo remained plush toys which meant Piglet often traveled in my pocket with Pooh bumping along behind us.

I must have stepped into the Hundred-acre Wood when Christopher was away at school because I didn’t meet him that first day. A hippopotamus-shaped donkey named Eeyore greeted me – a larger-than-life philosopher king, and wonder of wonders, not the least bit sullen, although his droopy-ears couldn’t help but give him a woe is me persona.

Pooh Bear was never the brightest bulb on a Christmas tree and his best friend, Piglet was an anxiety attack waiting to happen. But it’s less common knowledge that Christopher Robin, the golden boy, became a bit of a dark horse or that Tigger was a tame Bengal Tiger with a twisted sense of humor.

Surprisingly, it turns out toys can be subject to accidents which explains why Piglet was a nervous wreck. The timid little chap had been mauled by a neighbor’s Jack Russel on his first day at Cotchford Farm. When I met him, forty years later, his sweet little face remained a tad squashed from the incident. And if that wasn’t enough, after his friend Roo was lost on a picnic in 1930, Piglet became the unwilling recipient of Kanga’s regular doses of strengthening medicine and cold baths.

Kanga, a near-sighted kangaroo earthmother believed fervently in the medicinal benefits of Extract of Malt and never noticed when her son, Roo grew long pink ears.

Piglet had unwittingly been the wrong size to stand up and be counted or even recognized by Mother Kanga and automatically moved up the ranks like a soldier on inspection taking a step sideways, sideling casually and ever so unobtrusively to fill the space of another recruit who had momentarily stepped out of line, to go AWOL – a term I thought referred to Wol, a distinguished owl of letters with a frightful grasp of spelling but a sublime take on life being a moment-to-moment mystery requiring deep thought to resolve. Wol lived in a treehouse – a wise oracle with a shingle hanging outside his front door that read:

Ples Cnoke If An Anser Is Reqrd
Ring The Bell If An AnsR Is Not Reqd
 
– WOL

Piglet didn’t step up to fill Roo’s place, the irrepressible Tigger bounced him there in a concerted effort to fabricate the whitest of lies to protect Kanga from the truth that her son was missing after wandering off … perhaps carried off forever.

Wol advised telling porky pies was often the best one could hope for in a tight corner, and he said it so wisely, I believed it was true. But pork pies being a particularly discomforting thought to a piglet added another fear to Piglet’s growing list of dangers. Heffalumps were at the top. Being left alone after a picnic was at the bottom even though Pooh’s sixth sense radar often pinpointed Piglet’s exact whereabouts.

In any case, I had little to do with what eventually happened. It turns out the ‘be careful what you wish for thing’ is a double-edged dream. A door had saved my life, but it also set me further apart from children who were considered normal ducks.

When I turned six, I studied hard, intending to stay six forever. I reasoned, not unreasonably, being six years old at the time, that all my senses were six-ish. But I remained at sixes and sevens for the most part.

Eeyore taught me to stand firm against all opposing forces that threatened my happiness until eventually, time languishing in the Hundred-acre-Wood with a loving family gave me the confidence to defy my hapless mother.

The fuzzy caterpillar on the tip of my finger smiled and reared up on its front legs to study me. We were busy having a polite conversation when Mother arrived bearing the dreaded daily orange drink pretending to be juice. Being thirsty was not enough incentive to drink the ghastly stuff that always delivered a sugar rush with an aftertaste of what I imagined was hemlock.

I stared into Mother’s eyes and tipped it slowly, deliberately, into the grass, crushed the paper cup, and threw it in Mother’s face.

The grass screamed, not best pleased from being poisoned, for which I was mortified and later apologized profusely. The traumatized caterpillar fled as fast as its hundred-acre legs could go.

After that, events moved fast. Mother slapped my face, hustled me into a coat, and marched me, soldierly fashion through Jabbers Walk to a surprisingly benign forest inside the eye of a psychic storm.

I did my best not to grow up anywhere but as the best of intentions rarely applies, and time being a relentless taskmaster, the best thing to do, according to Wol, was to lie. I told a whopper by pretending I was monumentally stupid.

As a six-year-old who refused to age, I was, as you might expect, stubborn as a donkey for survival purposes in an exclusive clubhouse where no adults were allowed. The me who cast a shadow, opted to stay in the Hundred-acre Wood until the sun burned out. I sorted out what was real and what had I imagined that orangey day when I leaped from the cruel frying pan of Mother’s child-eating trees to the shelter of a leafy glade where I met a talking tree named Lucy.

Neither event was entirely fictional, but both were mystical.  

PRINT version AMAZON PURCHASE LINK for ‘SHAKESPEARE AT POOH CORNER’

E-BOOK AMAZON PURCHASE LINK for ‘SHAKESPEARE AT POOH CORNER’