Searching for Rabbits
Posted by Kate Wicker in Family on Tuesday, July 13, 2010 6:00 AM
It’s a spontaneous decision - to strap the older girls into the double stroller and to tuck the baby in the Ergo and head outdoors for an evening walk. The girls are already in their pajamas and think it’s a great adventure.
For me, it’s therapy.
The sky is bruised with clouds. It looks like a spring rain is on its way, and I hope I can drive out the hurt and the dull ache in my heart by physically pushing it out before the sky breaks apart.
My older girls are quiet at first. A breeze cuts across them, and I watch as my two-year-old’s uneven wisps of blond air take flight in the wind. A golden pile of my child’s hair sits on my dresser, evidence of an unfortunate encounter with scissors while I was nursing the baby to sleep for a nap. Those strands of hair were the straw that broke my back - and my patience.
I try to keep from crying. It has been a day of too many tears - from the older girls who are stressed about an upcoming move, from a sick baby, and from a tired mom.
As I walk, I have trouble keeping my head where my feet are. My mind races ahead to the future and how my actions from this day might affect my relationship with my daughters down the road. That image of me - the wonderful mom who is always gentle and never raises her voice - dissolves in the silent tears that begin tracking down my face.
We’re approaching a patch of green where on solo walks I’ve been known to see a rabbit hopping about. This is where I make my deal with God. I whisper to Him in my heart so my children cannot hear. Let there be a bunny rabbit. Please give them that. Give me that.
I say to the girls, “Keep your eyes peeled. This is where I sometimes see bunny rabbits. And keep quiet, too. We don’t want to scare them away.”
The girls lean out of the stroller, silent and seeking out a flash of fur in the maze of thick, green vegetation. My eyes strain, praying for my rabbit to appear.
But there’s nothing. I start to feel a childish anger toward God. Where’s my rabbit? Where’s my children’s little piece of happiness? Where’s my sign that you love me, forgive me, and are a real, breathing present in my life?
I’m about to mumble an apology to my girls about the dearth of cute, furry things (there have been as many apologies as tears today), but my oldest daughter says something first.
“Mommy! I think I saw a rabbit. Really. I saw some white ears poking out.”
“Where?” I ask.
“Over there,” she tries to point to a patch of vegetation we’ve already cruised past. “When we turn back around, we’ll check to see if the rabbit’s still there.”
Of course, there’s nothing there when we pass by the same place. To me, this is a corroboratory fact that it was only a mirage conjured up by the wishful thinking of a child. But to my daughter, it’s proof. “It definitely was a rabbit,” she says, “because it’s not there anymore. It must have hopped away when it saw us.”
When we return home, my girls comment on what a nice walk it was, especially because we “almost probably for sure saw a bunny rabbit.”
I flush with pleasure. My regrets from the day seem to soften with the sky that’s no longer an ominous gray but a peachy pink.
My five-year-old has a fractured ulna and radius acquired from a fall at the playground. The bones are already beginning to heal, the orthopedic reported at a recent appointment. Her fingers that have escaped the prison of her big, blue cast are still slightly puffy from the swelling, but she wields her arm as she always has. She is resilient. Her bones are malleable. Her body is quick to heal.
And, thank God, so is her heart.
I’m tempted to see my maternal missteps as global pronouncements of my failure to nurture my children right. But my children see no such thing. They forgive and they forget. Their mercy pours down on me like the spring rain that came later that same week we went looking for rabbits. I hate when my raw edges are exposed and I fall short of the mother I want to be, the mother I am called to be. But it’s my children who smooth out those edges by their very love for imperfect me and their knack at seeing things—good, hopeful things—that I don’t.
Where I see only wild grass, they see the rabbits.
While I’m busy looking for a sign from God that He loves and forgives me, my children are the heart of God Himself loving and forgiving me without me even asking for it.
Where I see everything I do wrong as a mother, they notice a lot of the things I do right—like taking them on walks at dusk in their pajamas to look for rabbits.
“Mommy?” my five-year-old asked me the other evening. “Can we go on another bedtime walk and look for rabbits?”
“Yes, let’s.”
—Senior writer Kate Wicker blogs at KateWicker.com.
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