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Janet L. Lazo-Davis

Dan T. Davis

 

Publisher

Second Star Creations

Infertility’s Anguish

Everyone Else Is Pregnant, Why Not Us?

Exploring the Emotions of Infertility

by Jan & Dan Davis



 

Velveteen Realities

Have you ever read The Velveteen Rabbit? This wonderful little book is about toys, memories, and wishes, but most of all, it’s about being real.

A little toy Velveteen Rabbit is loved and treasured so much by a little boy that, as the “Skin Horse” says, “Real isn’t how you are made. 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.”

Right after we started our infertility treatments, Denise found a “deluxe special package” containing a copy of the book as well as an actual Velveteen Rabbit, probably about the same size as intended in the story. The box had a plastic cover wrapped with ribbon so you could see what was inside.

Instead of opening it, Denise said, “That’s for our first child. I want our baby to have a Velveteen Rabbit, so that they can make it real.” So the box went into the closet, and as the years went by, I more or less forgot about it.

Friends were still aware that we enjoyed the book, and during our infertility struggle I personally got a nice hardback copy from a close friend, signed “For the Kid in You.” Even that was years ago, and strangely enough, I never read that copy of the book until tonight. Reading it is painful to me, because it reminds me that we don’t have children to make velveteen rabbits real.

We’ve moved quite a few times over the last few years. Recently, I made a promise to myself to go through each and every last box and to throw away all of the junk we haven’t used. As I was performing this task, a knot began to well up in my throat. Old memories. Items that had been put aside and forgotten. Denise’s little velveteen rabbit came to mind, and I knew what would be contained in the very next box …, a half-crushed package, covered by a cracked plastic cover.

Abandoned, without an owner, the rabbit would still be waiting.

Waiting to be used. Waiting to be loved. Waiting to be real.

* * *

Strangely enough, I got to the last box, and never found it. Yet I knew it had not been discarded, but had survived every single move. When I mentioned it to Denise that night in bed, she got out of bed without saying a word, opened her clothes closet, and pointed way up top to a box, which loudly proclaimed on the side, “Love makes you real.”

I climbed up on a stool and carefully took the box down. Rather than being crushed and bent, the box was in perfect condition, but still, never opened.

“Do you want to open it?” asked Denise.

“No.” I answered. Carefully, I placed the unopened box back into the top of her closet.

There, the rabbit still waits.

“And while the Boy was asleep, dreaming of the seaside, the little Rabbit lay among the old picture-books in the corner behind the fowl-house, and he felt very lonely.”


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Updated: October 24, 2003