My Journey to Pooh’s Tree House
My usual posts are travel logs and are written mostly so that I will remember what was special about a particular journey. Sometimes it’s adventure, sometimes it is knowledge gained, and sometimes it is rest and relaxation. The great journeys have a bit of all three. This year, 2020, Covid caused our trips to Norway, to China, Vietnam and Thailand, to National Parks in the Western US to be cancelled. Most of the year was spent at home with a few camping trips and trips to visit Jessie and her family being the great exception. But, this year I have taken a 5 month journey with my grandson, Theo, to the 100 acre woods and Pooh’s Tree House. Yes, 5 months! In April Dean and I turned a bedroom into a space for Jessie’s boys to enjoy as they were planning on visiting in August. We did it the Matz way using items we had in the house and workshop as much as possible. I mixed three partial cans of off white paint to make the perfect wall color, Dean built a desk out of vintage saw horses and headboards out of old shutters, and picture frames from his store of wood, I recovered a chair, painted another and finished the furniture he built, then I pulled out Jessie and Jason’s old toys that I had saved.
After the room was complete, I showed it to Jessie and three year old Theo. He and I started having regular FaceTime chats and play sessions as we were all sequestered at home due to the pandemic. After tiring of playing cars and hide and seek many times, I suggested we find something in his and Bodhi’s room to play. He loved the idea. When I showed him a large book that used to be his Momma’s and opened into Pooh’s Tree House complete all the little figurines that ‘lived’ there, he was excited to play. After several play sessions lasting up to two hours, he felt like these little figures were real friends. He would call on FaceTime and ask to speak to Piglet, his favorite character. ‘Hi, can Pigwet play?’ was his usual request. He and I (Piglet) would have a conversation and play in the treehouse. Pooh, Tiger, Eeyore, Kanga and Roo, and Owl would all join in the fun. We discussed all sorts of things that an almost four year old boy found interesting. I love Theo’s imagination and willingness to use objects that I could find in ‘their’ room at my house to represent real objects like food, swimming pool, blankets…
After playing for about a month, we started introducing new friends into the 100 acre woods, things like cars that could talk, climb the tree and fly and other animals that were small enough to fit into the group. Lizard and mousy were favorites. We would play hide and seek, have parties, visit parks, farms, have races, read stories and have the Pooh characters go to ‘night, night’ and wake up.
Theo started having friends on his side of the ‘mirror’ be part of the play story. Since Theo has an abundance of animal figurines and cars, there were lots of different friends to join the play. We would help some friends be brave, help some do superhuman feats and always find a way to accept and include any new friend who wanted to join in the fun. It didn’t matter if the friend typically lived in the ocean, farm, was a cartoon character or lived on earth thousands of years ago. Pooh and friends are a very welcoming group! A couple of months into the play Theo watched his first Winnie the Pooh movie and he understood why Eeyore talked slow and sad and why Piglet sounded nervous in our play. He never questioned it up to this point. All friends were accepted and loved just as they are, but now he understood more after seeing the movie. We played this game several times a week for months. The last month he was in preschool so our play time decreased but Pooh and the gang and the treehouse frequently ‘rode in the car’ on the way to school thanks to the wonder of FaceTime.
About 4 months into our treehouse adventure Dean and I drove our trailer to Savannah and visited in person for a week. The tree house and friends made the journey with us at Theo’s request. I also bought a new set of characters so that both of our houses would have a set once Dean and I returned home. During this wonderful week of much needed family time we played daily with the treehouse live in his bedroom or on the dining room table. Baby brother had turned one and now was getting quite mobile and found the characters to be a perfect size to carry around. This caused the expected tension and I would give Bodhi the ‘new’ characters to carry around and chew on so that Theo and I, and sometimes Gramps, could continue our adventures in the 100 acre woods.
Theo explains what is happening at the Tree House today.
Theo is setting up a picnic at the Tree House. The openings in the Tree House are meant for tiny hands!
Theo pointed out multiple times how his small hands could much more easily fit through the tiny doors and into the tiny nooks and crannies. Of course, he was correct as it was designed for little hands rather than Gigi’s big hands. One day he got up the courage to ask if the tree house could stay at his house and, when I immediately said ‘yes’, he was thrilled. Dean and I returned home with the ‘new’ set of characters and the tree house and large set of characters now live in Theo’s room.
Several weeks later we met again in a condo in Florida for a week of fun and to celebrate Theo’s 4th birthday. He made sure Momma packed the tree house. Each day we found some time to play with the tree house and his new birthday toys joined in the fun. He is very much into alligators and lizards so, of course, they became part of the story.
New lizard friends received on Theo’s birthday join old friends at the Tree House.
It is November and his days are filled more with school now that his little world has found a bit of normalcy in this pandemic, but he will call a couple of times a week, often in the morning before school or on a Saturday and during the conversation he will pull out the tree house, characters and whatever new friends will join us for that particular adventure. Recently, we all traveled to a pumpkin farm on Lightening McQueen. The friends don’t often get to leave the Tree House but they found this trip quite enjoyable.
Our current FaceTime often involves playing games or playing with other new toys that he has. Now that he has turned four he has a very generous supply of toys from which to choose. I do treasure our time together, our talks and will always treasure the way that an old tree house and a few characters gave us both fun, learning and adventure in days of sequestration, gave a little boy play time using his imagination, and gave his Momma a bit of a break.
Theo and friends travel to a pretend pumpkin farm while Gigi watches on the other side of the mirror.