books have always been a constant in my house - my Mom and Dad read to us until we could read to ourselves and I remember many nights lying between my sisters beds on the floor reading to them begging my Mom to let me read "just one more".....I have done the same for my girls, even as recently as a few months ago reading aloud to Felecia from a book she had to read for school that she hated so much she couldnt make herself read one more word. in books I have found dreams and escape and most of all inspiration. The greatest gift I ever got was shortly after my divorce when I was getting set up in my first solo apartment and beginning the task of being sole provider for my girls. I got a gift from my parents, attached was the line "a home for a bunny, a home of her own" I cried and cried.....next Christmas my Dad bought me the book - and it sits on my bookshelf next to all the other books I can not imagine not owning. such amazingly strong power in such simple words......
this week it has been a different bunny book from my childhood that is coming back to me.
the other day this passage showed up in my mailbox.....
The Velveteen Rabbit is a classy book for children with a message for adults. In it is a revealing nursery dialogue between a new toy rabbit and an old skin horse. As they are lying side by side one day, Rabbit asks Horse:
"What is REAL?" . . . "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
That's the thing about real.....the greatest compliment I have ever received is that I was one of the most real people someone has ever met. Real isnt about how pretty you are, how well you dress, how eloquently you speak or what car you drive. It isnt about the house you live in or even the books you have read - its about the way you live and love. Its the magic in acceptance without judgement. It is the sheer joy of loving people for who they are and where they are. It is living in the now- loving this moment in time and being fully present and letting the past and future take care of themselves. It is the way I want to be.
Recently I was looking at photos with a dear friend. the picture was of her and her new husband. He was leaning against a post and she was leaning into him - and the way they looked at eachother was the epitome of every love story you have ever read. It was absolutely the most beautiful thing I have ever seen....the picture was taken on the beach, the wind was blowing her hair, the dress was floating around her but all I could see was the look in their eyes......I dream of the day when someone will look at me that way - like the rest of the world disappears and it is all about that one moment and the two of us (but I digress). Anyway.....that picture started a long discussion about asthetics - what was more important - the hair out of place or the look in his eyes as the looked at her. I didn't know how to tell her - no one would see the hair - they would be captured by her smile and his eyes.
I should have read her the Velveteen Rabbit
Velveteen Love Song
My coat is all tattered and worn to shreds My whiskers have wandered away.I picked up some dirt in some flower beds I think that it’s in there to stay.But deep in your eyes are a needle and thread And a wonder that scrubs me so clean.I see in their mirror, I’m beautiful. I pose and I laugh and I preen. My bottom’s as stout as it’s always been. And maybe a little bit more?I never believed they were good for much‘cept keeping my ears off the floor;But then when you take me and toss me high, I fly like the fleetest Gazelle.And the joy that my dusty heart takes in your touchis more then a rabbit can tell My eyes are just buttons of two penny glass They’re either too brown or too green.One of them might not stay on too much longer.There’s plenty they’ve both never seen.But they see my way clear to a home in your heart. I live in the love that you feel.And there of all places , A place of my ownWhere a velveteen rabbit is real.
— Velveteen Love Song by Bob Franke
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