Hi
everyone, Shasta here! Just wanted to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and
to say thank you again for allowing ME to even have a chance at having another
Christmas. I am probably leaving some wonderful folks at AGA out of my
thanks so I would appreciate it if you would pass them along for me.
I
am so happy to have a Mom and Dad that love me so much (they tell me all the
time) and my very own home. I have learned to hop up onto the couch
whenever I want to and love to stretch out, and I am getting around better
and better. Mom and Dad tell me all the time how beautiful
I am and mom calls me her "velveteen rabbit" because she says I am
all soft and fuzzy and real.
I wasn't sure what she meant until she read
me the following, and I like it now when she calls me her own velveteen rabbit
because even though I kind of limp sometimes, and I can't hear real well, or my
eyes or a little watery, it means I am really, really loved and I am
special.
The Skin Horse
had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his
brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the
hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise,
for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and
swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that
they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic
is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise
and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the
Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender,
before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz
inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are
made," said the Skin Horse. "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."
"Does it hurt?" asked the
Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin
Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being
hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like
being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"
"It doesn't happen all at
once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's
why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or
who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of
your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the
joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you
can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."
"I suppose you are
real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he
thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive.
But the Skin Horse only smiled.
I
couldn't have wished for a better Christmas.
Love,
Shasta
PS
- The pictures above are some that my Mom took of me today on our walk to
show you how beautiful I am now that I have so many folks who love me.
The 2nd picture shows my left side with my bad back leg--it feels so much
better that I even use it now rather than just swing it along.
