Linda Terrell, 1974, there in the church lobby. She was her own— hardly an inch above five feet, nothing fancy, no makeup, a small-town Texas voice, and a miracle, if I’d had eyes back then, if I’d know what real was, if I wasn’t still grooming my own velveteen. She made quiet overtures, the way of all wise women—actual love. She would have loved off all the shine, coaxed the pretender to stand aside; she only needed a small opening. My costume was zipped up tight, I never thought to look beneath, but she saw someone hiding I had yet to meet. (Old souls see right through.) I quietly stepped a careful dance around her dance. She stayed up late one night with scrounged bits of paper, her watercolor Velveteen Rabbit surrounded by the famous quote, and offered it to me to stand in for her heart until my suffering began. By then, she was nurturing her own family, making more real humans, the way real begets real. One day, the book found me and read itself to me, too late for a thousand paths into happiness, but not too late to begin wearing down the shine, losing some fur, feeling an actual itch, and beginning to see her likeness here and there. Now I am old, her artwork framed upon the wall in my solitary house. I know her kin are everywhere, waiting happily for me to scratch the itch, sniff the air, come out and play.
The Rabbit
The Rabbit
The Rabbit
Linda Terrell, 1974, there in the church lobby. She was her own— hardly an inch above five feet, nothing fancy, no makeup, a small-town Texas voice, and a miracle, if I’d had eyes back then, if I’d know what real was, if I wasn’t still grooming my own velveteen. She made quiet overtures, the way of all wise women—actual love. She would have loved off all the shine, coaxed the pretender to stand aside; she only needed a small opening. My costume was zipped up tight, I never thought to look beneath, but she saw someone hiding I had yet to meet. (Old souls see right through.) I quietly stepped a careful dance around her dance. She stayed up late one night with scrounged bits of paper, her watercolor Velveteen Rabbit surrounded by the famous quote, and offered it to me to stand in for her heart until my suffering began. By then, she was nurturing her own family, making more real humans, the way real begets real. One day, the book found me and read itself to me, too late for a thousand paths into happiness, but not too late to begin wearing down the shine, losing some fur, feeling an actual itch, and beginning to see her likeness here and there. Now I am old, her artwork framed upon the wall in my solitary house. I know her kin are everywhere, waiting happily for me to scratch the itch, sniff the air, come out and play.