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Chapter Ten in Which We Play Games
Whew! Let me catch my breath!
I've just come back from the fellowship hall where I got into an intense round of keep the ball away from the Parent's Day Out Kids. Actually, I was playing soccer. They were playing Run Around, Chase Pastor Phil and Squeal. It's a fairly simple game, which is about all they can handle at this point. I tried to teach them Duck, Duck, Goose with limited success. By that I mean they understood the concept of sitting on the ground in a circle. It is was the Duck, Duck, Duck, Duck, Goose! and run part they didn't get.
It could be their limited verbal skills. Perhaps if the game was Beeka, Beeka, Naanee! I would have had more luck. At any rate, the game ended abruptly when I tapped Mitchell Bro on the head and said Goose! He was startled for a moment and then looked up at me with a "Hey!" sort of look and then decided that perhaps crying was a better response to someone tapping you on the head and calling you a Goose. I could see that the others were coming to the same conclusion so I quickly said in my best game playing voice, "Run, Mitchell, Run!" He did. Right out the door and down the hall.
So we ended up playing the Run Around, Chase Pastor Phil and Squeal Game. The only trouble I see with this game is that there is not enough sitting. The great thing about Duck, Duck, Goose is that if you're a Duck, you get to stay seated. The only thing that might make Duck, Duck, Goose better is if it was played by mimes. That's my kind of game. A quiet sitting game in which the players appear to be sleeping and in fact, the really good ones are.
So that is why I needed to catch my breath. I tried to catch it in the Fellowship Hall by falling down and lying still. It almost worked. Until Karl Koenig jumped on my stomach and my breath got away again. Apparently the rest of the Parent's Day Out Kids or PDOK's as I call them, thought that Karl had invented a new game. I believe it's called the Jump On Pastor Phil and Watch Him Turn Blue Game.
I know what these ten chapters of Pooh are all about now. They're about me. When I look in the mirror I see my father as he looked to me when I was young - er. And something about that is... unsettling. It's not really the getting old -er. I guess I expected that. It's that it happened so quickly. You see, I'm almost sure I was younger last year. At least I still thought of myself as young. I don't think I do anymore, especially when six small children are using my stomach (ample as it may be) as a trampoline.
It's not a bad thing, getting old - er. It's just life. We're born. We grow up. We grow old. We die. In between there are a lot of games to play, some serious, some frivolous, some dangerous, some not worth playing at all, some that just are necessary, and a few, I hope, that are just plain fun.
Christopher Robin is leaving the Forest and he doesn't know how to say good-bye. So he and Pooh go to the very top of the 100 acre Wood to the only place in the Forest where you can sit down carelessly, without getting up again almost at once and looking for somewhere else. Sitting there they can see the whole world spread out until it touched the sky...
"Pooh, promise you'll never forget about me ever."
"I promise," he said.
"Pooh, whatever happens you will understand, won't you?
"Understand what?"
"Oh, nothing." He laughed and jumped to his feet. "Come on!"
"Where?" said Pooh.
"Anywhere!" said Christopher Robin.
The House At Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne: E.P.Dutton & Co. New York; 1956
These ten chapters have been all about growing up and what we lose and what we gain and how the two really go together. You see, when the games get really serious, when you'd rather not play at all but don't have a choice, when you can see the end coming and you know it will not be a happy one this time, that's when Pooh, at least for me, is a gift of God.
It's a promise really. It's a promise that someday when all is said and done and the serious games have all been played, it will time for fun, just plain fun. And it won't be fun that costs more than it's worth, or fun that is really seriousness in disguise, or fun that gets you into trouble. It will be real, honest fun, like Chase Pastor Phil and Squeal Fun. Only this time the grownups won't get tired. And everyone will play together and no one will get hurt and everyone will win.
And (God) will destroy the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death for ever, and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from all faces... Isaiah 25:7 -8
The last words A.A. Milne wrote about Pooh and Christopher Robin go like this:
So they went off together. But wherever they go, and whatever happens to them on the way, in that enchanted place on the top of the Forest, a little boy and his Bear will always be playing.
The House At Pooh Corner by A.A. Milne: E.P.Dutton & Co. New York; 1956
God, like Pooh, I suppose, is always there; wherever you are, just waiting to be remembered, waiting to be picked up, waiting to play.
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