Why I Just Couldn't Kill The Bunny

Moving so often hurts. So many days I am a teary mess. It is not the goodbyes, it is not the making of new friends. It is not the settling down. I am glad that God allows those things to come easier to me than most people that move.

The heartbreak comes in doses of things left behind, of sounds I will no longer hear, and sights that will too fast fade from my memory.

I waited until the last minute to donate the tiny size four shoes. The toes are worn thin from the places that my very last baby stomped and tripped on his first steps. I had no good reason to pack them and take them with us. They were too old to pass along to a friend and too worn for a keepsake. But to this mama they were a visible meter of my very last baby's "first" steps. I threw them into a donation bag like hot coals and cinched it up fast.

My Son1 is very creative and constructs things for me all of the time. One dull and gray day he brought me a fighter pilot made from modeling clay. He donned a vintage fighter pilot cap. Son1 also molded the pilot a set of dumb bells and weights so the fighter pilot could work out. And on a frigid winter day in Boston I stuck that little splashy pilot on my kitchen window sill. On ugly gray days I stared at the little pilot and thought of the little six year old that might not make things just for me, for too many more days. On the last day in the house, I pulled the little clay trio off the sill like a band aid. No matter how fast I pulled I knew it would sting for a second. And I clenched it and shoved it into a trash bag without looking. Tossing that little fighter pilot was like tossing moments in time for me...moments that I cannot get back.

On the last days as we moved things down and out the service door of our 1928 Craftsman, I found myself standing still, listening to the sounds of the boys pounding down the hollow wooden steps. The old flimsy door snapped shut and the small glass window in it rattled. I had heard that sequence, pounding stairs, snapping door, and rattling window a thousand times this year. It was the sound of boys rushing to school, of boys barreling out to build an igloo fort, and boys flying out the door to chase turkeys, rabbits, and chipmunks.

These days of backyard adventures are gone. I will not hear them in a city apartment in Tokyo for some years.

The day before we left Massachusetts I knew I had to deal with the paper mâché bunny. I put off tossing him. In art class, Son1 crafted the bunny like the other kids. But he was the only kid who gave his bunny an umbrella, like Peter Rabbit.

How many more days will fairy tales matter to him?

I stuffed the bunny in a toss bag, but Son1 discovered him before he made it to the can. He begged me not to toss the bunny. So when he was in school, I drove the bunny to a trash can away from my house. I stuffed the plastic bag into a dome lid trash can. But that umbrella just would not slip into the can. So with conviction I grabbed that umbrella handle and rescued the bunny.

I just could not kill the bunny.



Today we are driving in a packed vehicle from Oklahoma to New Mexico. We are driving with bags squished between legs. Our quarters are tight. But between Dr. Romance and me sits a paper mâché bunny. He is so much more to me than dried painted newspaper. He reminds how brief time is with my boys.