Bunny

My Bird has a bunny.  Not a breathing, hopping bunny but a real bunny, none-the-less.

It was one of those impulse buys from the stuffed animal bin at Ikea when she was maybe four months old.  She was in the cart and needed something to prop her head on and I grabbed this soft, fluffy, bunny from the bin and she laid her head down on it and went to sleep.  It was on the trip home from one of her 1st hospital stays.  The first of many, it would turn out but, at the time, we were blissfully ignorant of all that time spent in hospitals and doctors' offices and specialists and five hour road trips to see the best of the best of the best.  We were "newbies" and were in that "she will just outgrow this" phase.

Bunny has been the Bird's constant companion for six years.  He has been gowned for every surgery, decontaminated at every hospital stay, snuggled for every nap and bedtime, and washed more times than I can count.

Bunny isn't very fluffy anymore.  His stuffing is mostly gone.  His neck flops over because that is where he is held.  His ears have been loved almost bare.  His whiskers are mostly gone.

We recently found a new bunny.  On ebay.  We ordered him and were going to put him in her closet for the day when Bunny was just a scrap of brown, sort-of-fur.  Bird saw the open box, reached her hand in, and felt.

"A BUNNY!!!!!" was echoing through the house after one, blind touch and New Bunny was born.  She loves them both.  But Bunny Bunny is still the bunny of choice.

Tonight, at Vacation Bible School (VBS for the uninitiated), she left Bunny Bunny in the imagination room.  I came to pick her up and when she saw me, she collapsed on the ground, in tears.  All I could understand was "Bunny Bunny."

The loss of Bunny Bunny is always a code-blue emergency and I struggled to understand what she was saying about where Bunny was.

In the middle of her panic (and truth be told, mine as well) I began thinking...

You know...I am as attached to that scraggly piece of brown fluff as she is.  My heart was beating and I was having an anxiety attack at the thought of a lost Bunny Bunny.  Bunny Bunny has been lost before, in the toy bin at the Disney Store in the Mall of America, left behind in the classroom at school, dropped on a walk around the neighborhood but, he has always been found.  Somehow, God has led us back to Bunny Bunny.

We check on him like he is a person (OK...is everyone in the car?  Do we have Bunny?)  We tuck him back in her bed when he tumbles out.  He gets the seat in the cart next to her when we shop.  He is her best friend.  He has never ever ever let her down.

What will happen when Bunny Bunny is retired? Or when she gets "too old" for him?

We found Bunny Bunny, tucked on the shelf in the imagination room.  Clutched to her chest, her fingers rubbing the medicine wheel, tucked into his soft, fluff tail, Bunny Bunny was home.  Back in the Birds arms.  At home, she snuggled on daddy and sobbed her sads out.  Her fear of losing Bunny Bunny obvious to everyone in earshot.

Will she ever have a live friend as loyal and loving as Bunny Bunny?