Curiously enough, A.A. Milne summarizes my birthday sentiments most succinctly:

“Tristis appares, Ior.”
“Tristis? Quid est cur sim tristis? Est dies meus natalis. Faustissimus anni dies.”
“Dies tuus natalis?” dixit Pu mirabundus.
“Videlicet est. Nonne vides? Ecce munera, quae accepi.” Ungulam hinc et illinc agitavit. “Vide libum natalicium! Candelas et saccharum roseum!”
Pu primum ad dextram, deinde ad sinistram spectavit.
“Dona?” dixit Pu. “Libum natalicium?” dixit Pu. “Ubi?”
“Ea videre nequis?”
“Nequeo,” dixit Pu.
“Etiam ego nequeo,” dixit Ior. “Jocus,” explicavit. “Ha-ha!”[1]

I look first to the right, then to the left. Opera mea, strewn across the desk, and time, and space. Unintegrable fragments of fragments. “Etiam ego nequeo,” I whisper after the favorite memory of my childhood. “Ha-ha.”

Addendum I (April 17, 1983)

As a child, and later on as an adolescent, I often endeavored to match my friends and acquaintances with A.A. Milne’s characters. But I avoided making such comparisons with respect to myself. Today I am ready for that task. At seven-and-thirty it appears that, of all the inhabitants of Silva c. jugerum, Ior matches me best. The brainless bear, the very antithesis of the abominable ass, remains my hero, though. Curiously enough, their awkward friendship and mutual understanding summarizes the rest of my days, the rest of my years… Faustissimus anni dies, indeed.

Addendum II (April 22, 1996)

Christopher Robin Milne died yesterday. He was seventy-five. Another end of my childhood.

Addendum III (April 17, 2020)

Forty years after this piece was penned half in jest, Christopher Robin is still alive together with his entourage, and especially on yet another among my birthdays, which keep coming at me at an ever-greater speed:

“Ior,” dixit Bubo, “Christophorus Robinus convivium parat.”
“Id est magni momenti et ponderis,” dixit Ior. “Censeo eos mihi micas reliquuas et pediubus calcatas epularum missuros. Cari et amabiles sunt. Minime, omitte mentionem facere.”
“Ecce invitatio pro te.”
“Invitatio qualis generis?”
“Invitatio!”
“Sic, iam audivi. Cuius e minibus elapse est?”
“Non est res esculenta, est invitatio ad convivium. Cras!”
Ior lente caput quassans: “Porcellum vis invitare,” dixit. “Parvulum illum cum auriculis trepidantibus. Porcellum videlicet dicis. Ei nuntiabo.”
“Minime, minime,” dixit Bubo, iam impatienter. “Tu es.”
“Serio, dicis tu?”
“Scilicet, hoc pro certo habeo. Christopherus Robinus dixit: ‘Universus omnes! Dic omnibus’.”
“Omnibus praeter Iorem?”
“Omnibus,” dixit Bubo humiliter.
“O,” dixit Ior. “Error, procul dubio, promitto tamen. At si imber erit, nemo mi objiciat.”[2]

Sadly, though, Christopher Robin’s banquet will have to be postponed, perhaps indefinitely, on account of the novel coronavirus pandemic that has been shaking the world for months already.

Footnotes

1. A.A. Milnei, Winnie Ille Pu, in Latinum conversus auctore Alexandro Lenardo, Londonii: Sumptibus Methueni et Sociorum Neo-Eboraci: Sumptibus Duttonis, MCMLXXV, p. 53.

2. Op. cit., p. 110.