Today’s prompt:
Outline the plot turns for the personal history of one of your most treasured objects
Over my lifetime, I’ve carried a few objects from my childhood with me as I’ve moved from place to place. An afghan that my mom crocheted for me when I was eight. A solid brass brontosaurus from the Museum of Natural History I purchased in grade school. And Pooh Bear.
I received Pooh Bear as a Christmas present when I was three, so I can’t really remember life B.P.B (Before Pooh Bear). He’s been with me longer than most of my friends and has seen quite a bit in his stuffed animal lifetime. His story mirrors most of my life experiences good and bad, and he’s rather worn out. Most of his fur has long gone and if the Velveteen Rabbit was correct, he’d be ‘real’ as ‘real’ could be.
His story begins in the arms of a three old who loves the A.A. Milne stories and the deziens of the Hundred Acre Woods. After his companion’s father passes away, he spends more than a few nights in her arms, comfort against the confusion that has entered her life. He gets to travel to Washington D.C. and actually meets President Lyndon Johnson in the White House. At home, he has a place of honor on the girl’s bed, front and foremost in a pile of stuffed animals. He travels along with her to far too many hospital stays and offers comfort and a stuffed body to cry into, when doctors and family members tell her to be a brave and good girl and she feels anything but those things. He watches her grow up and listens to her learn to play clarinet and guitar, proving a rapt audience. When high school gets to be too much, when she’s not asked to the prom, when she feels like the ugliest girl on the planet, he offers once again the comfort and hugs to his companion in an unconditional love of a stuffed bear.
He accompanies her to college, where having lost a good deal of his fur, is nicknamed D.P or dilapidated Pooh. He travels with her to graduate school and looks over her as she struggles with writing her thesis and studying. He sees her finally meeting her husband and traveling to California with her to a new life on the West Coast. He’s very worn now and needs more tender loving care in handling. The companion’s husband reads about a woman in the East Bay who repairs dolls and surprises Pooh’s companion by getting him repaired and fitted with a new felt jacket. He watches the couple over the years as they build their life in California, resting in honor on a bureau, happy that he has shared all of this with his girl.
skullwoman 