Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

So . . . this ten minutes is about whimsy as the presidential candidates swagger and bluff.

For me, Alan Alexander Milne exemplifies whimsy in the shape of Winnie the Pooh. I don’t mean the Disney travesty; rather I mean the original text and the original wispy illustrations by Ernest Shepard.

Winnie the Pooh was there when the child I once was wanted a bedtime story to carry her through the night and into the next day on the wings of basic emotional honesty. He was there when that little girl needed someone or when, as Piglet says in The House At Pooh Corner, “I just wanted to be sure of you.”

Pooh was my first companion, my favorite pal, my original best friend. Now I consider myself grown, and Pooh is still the constant in the ever-changing Hundred Acre Wood of Life. When I’m sad, he reminds me that sadness has a sweet side. When I’m content, he helps me recall how simple things make for the greatest contentment. Others may choose Updike and his Rabbit, Bach and his seagull, different authors and their symbolic animal companions, but I hold fast to my bear.

After two marriages and four (two biological and two step-)children and 28 different places that have been home, I live on a beautiful river in Michigan with my partner, Earl. We each have an office in our home and mine is decorated with Pooh memorabilia.

There is a stuffed Pooh and a stuffed Piglet. The first I bought for myself while the second came from my friend, Judi. There are several photo frames evoking the Pooh theme, and each of them is filled with a favorite friend or family member of mine.

This is what Winnie the Pooh really stands for:

Always be there for your friends; they are your most important possession. Treat your family as you would your friends, not the reverse. Apply this axiom, and you have it 95 percent correct. Pass it on and you’ve got 100 percent.

Author Milne died in 1956. I was 12 years old and don’t recall being aware of Milne’s passing. But then he was not the one who was real. Rather, what was real was the casually illustrated but permanently affixed image of Winnie — as solid as today, as ephemeral as yesterday, and as promissory as tomorrow.