ve.lveteen rabbit

Have you ever read the book The Ve.lveteen Rabbit?  I loved this story as a child and I haven't read it in a long time, these words hit me this morning as I was re-reading them.  Below is an excerpt from a blog I follow, her words could be mine, but first The Ve.lveteen Rabbit


"What is Real?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "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 who 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."

. . .

[The Rabbit] longed to become Real, to know what it felt like; and yet the idea of growing shabby and losing his eyes and whiskers was rather sad. He wished that he could become it without these uncomfortable things happening to him.



"If the standard for being Real is someone REALLY loving you, then our twins were most definitely Real. They weren't with us for a long time, but they were most definitely loved for a long time. Since before we even knew they were there.

And what about me? Perhaps our twins didn't - couldn't have - loved me.  But I definitely feel shabby and worn. And, because I loved them so deeply, it hurt. It continues to hurt."Uncomfortable" things happened to me.

Although I wish that these "uncomfortable" things hadn't happened to me, in the end, will they help make me Real?* Or maybe, just maybe, all the while I was bemoaning the fact that I didn't feel like a "real" mother - perhaps the very act of loving the twins made me a Real mother all along?" 



If you would like to read her whole post click here.