The very best of something

I always get to where I’m going by walking away from where I’ve been – Winnie the Pooh

So, I did!. I walked away from the computer, the garden, the laundry and such, adjusted my newly installed magnificent driver’s side mirror, repositioned my car’s seat and rambled off to the elegant La Grange Theatre. Oh, it was a journey, for certain, for are not all walking aways filled with challenges?

 

The first challenge was my own winding road. The bridge to be crossed is being repaired and down to one lane with a temporary stack of poles and lights  giving drivers the green when the way is clear. I sat for at least 5 precious minutes waiting for the light to turn green, with no car coming the opposite way during the entire wait. Then, a freight train, a very slow moving freight train, ate up another 5 precious minutes, followed by much traffic juggling for parking spaces, turn lanes, pedestrians, and bicyclists who all felt that the road was their very own (when, really, wasn’t it just mine?)

I parked the car in the very last available spot, then I walked as fast a I walk these days and entered the gilded theatre! Ticket in hand, in I went, to the opening strains of a woodsy tea party awaiting Christopher Robin for a sad goodbye as woodland friends gathered in the 100 Acre Woods and were brought to life by the magic of imagination.

I found a seat, which wasn’t hard as there were but a dozen or so “walkers away” in the theatre; a group of women in front of me, a few more mid-section, an older fellow with a soft drink in one hand, a big container of popcorn in the other, and a mother with her preschool aged child across the aisle from me. The little girl was the bow on the gift of this movie. I could hear her uttering her fears in the scary parts, crawling onto her mama’s lap, and her infectious squeals of laughter were as if on cue from the movie’s director, as Tigger bounces, Eeyore laments and Owl pontificates. Quiet moments and mad-cap scenes made all-the-more delightful by this young darling.

Christopher Robin is a story of finding one’s self while battling the hufflelumps and woofles of life, all on a weekend when the overworked, adult Christopher must work on a way to cut costs for the suitcase company he works for with others’ jobs on the line, while his boss goes off to play golf, and his wife and daughter are off to the Robin cottage in Sussex.

In-the-meantime, long forgotten Winnie cannot find his best friends and misses the long-gone Christopher Robin, who surely would know how to find them. Winnie does, well, what Winnie does, which is to walk away from where he is to find Christopher.

What a beautiful, funny, sad, thought-provoking movie this is. To think, I might not have gone off and walked away had it not been for the fact that yet another certain young girl, who owns my heart, but who lives far, far away, remarked to her mommy upon seeing Christopher Robin that she thought Yia Yia might enjoy it, too – and I did. I most certainly did, and I think that you might as well.

“Doing nothing often leads to the very best of something.” – Winnie the Pooh

https://movies.disney.com/christopher-robin

(movie trailer from the official Disney site)