This is a tale sad and true.
It’s a tale of love, loss and abandon.
This is the tale of two bunnies.
The first, you met on Facebook and Instagram when I posted a picture of ‘Floppy’ – the less than perfect bunny ‘made with love’ one Good Friday afternoon.
‘I am so happy my Mum can sew,’ said Elfie, as her daddy lifted my old forsaken Elna sewing machine from the loft.
We had bought material to make stuffed toys about two months ago, and finally, the sewing machine was at the ready.
My youngest daughter was asleep – having crashed out early for the day, exhausted. I was pleased to have the entire afternoon alone with my older girl, Elfie. I miss her companionship. With four in the home, with work, with preschool, with one thing and another, our lovely time together is brief, and fleeting, so I catch it when I can.
After a few bumbles, the old Elna, which once belonged to my grandma, burbled into action.
‘Damn,’ I accidentally swore in front of my daughter, ‘I am out of thread.’
‘Don’t worry, Mama, you have a little bit left. You’ll make it.’
She watched keenly as I squished and stretched that bunny skin through the machine, using the last bit of mis-matched thread left in the entire house.
It came to turning bunny skin inside out, or the right side in, depending on your perspective. I wasn’t hopeful. But Elfie was.
She didn’t mind how demented and weird that bunny looked. Stuffed, he didn’t improve much, but still she wasn’t concerned. When I stitched in two lopsided eyes in the wrong place, and a little lopsided mouth/whiskery type thing, she only loved him more.
‘He’s Real!’ she exclaimed.
If you have read The Velveteen Rabbita hundred times, as I have to my daughter, you will get why this simple little statement made me want to cry. He was Real. Bunny was actually Real.
‘I will call him Floppy,’ she said, and proceeded to look for a shirt for poor old Floppy.
She hugged him while I read to her, and snuggled him tight in bed. ‘I love Floppy so much. I am going to take him everywhere,’ she told me.
The next morning, true to her word, Floppy came with us to the farmer’s market. When her attention fell off Floppy momentarily and onto a chocolate-coated mango ice block, Floppy dove for protection in Dad’s pocket.
At some point, walking back to the car to get the pram for Baby, her daddy dropped Floppy. He realised when he reached the car. Back-tracking he found Floppy on the road, and right there in front, a car had pulled up, only inches away from Floppy’s lopsided whiskers.
Unthinkingly, with only love in his heart, her daddy threw out his long arm to rescue Floppy from being squashed by the car’s tyre. A dog barked from the car window into his near-deaf ear and the car’s engine whirred, as he risked his hand and possibly his arm to rescue Floppy.
Only after did he stop to think about the stupidity of his brave and loving act.
That night, the night before Easter Sunday, I sat up late making a sister for Floppy for Elfie’s own baby sister. Floppy’s sister was 100 times better than Floppy, because I learned from my mistakes. But she wasn’t made with quite the same love and enthusiasm, as my companion, Elfie, was in bed.
Easter Sunday, the girls did their thing, buzzing around the garden looking for eggs.
Quietly, midst chocolate gorging, Elfie whispered to me, “I am going to swap Floppy.” She put Floppy’s pretty dress on the prettier and more perfect rabbit, and claimed her as her own. Floppy lay strewn, nude and grubby on the floor, never to be played with again.
[jwplayer mediaid=”4049″]
Do you sew? Have you ever made something for your children? Have you ever felt abandoned?
For more tales from the sunshine house, visit me over at Facebook. You can also sign up for my monthly newsletter, where I occasionally run giveaways for subscribers, and update you with the latest sunshine news.
The post The tale of two bunnies appeared first on My Little Sunshine House.
