It was a difficult day in the Mommytary Madness household. It is incredibly difficult to lose someone. It is even more difficult to watch your child go through the emotions of loss. So today, as we say goodbye to a very dear friend, I leave you with parts of a story, one of my favorites...a story many of you know very well, a story that was originally published in 1922 and has been retold and republished many times since.
"What is REAL?"
“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?"
"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.”
"...once you are Real you can't become unreal again. It lasts for always."
“Weeks passed, and [he] grew very old and shabby, but the Boy loved him just as much. He loved him so hard that he loved all his whiskers off…he even began to lose his shape…”
"And so [he] was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-house...[and] he thought of those long sunlit hours in the garden--how happy they were--and a great sadness came over him."
"He thought of the Skin Horse, so wise and gentle, and all that he had told him. Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this? And a tear, a real tear, trickled down his little shabby nose and fell to the ground. And then a strange thing happened. For where the tear had fallen a flower grew out of the ground...And presently the blossom opened, and out of it there stepped a fairy."
“I am the nursery magic Fairy,” she said. “I take care of all the playthings that the
children have loved. When they are old
and worn out and the children don’t need them any more, then I come and take
them away with me and turn them into Real.”
“Wasn’t I Real before?”
“You were Real to the Boy,” the Fairy said, “because he
loved you. Now you shall be Real to
every one.”
