I completely understand. After reading The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes, I am beginning to understand more about myself than I have from any other work of literature I have ever read ~ and I have read hundreds (maybe thousands) of books. I do not know if I am able to articulate this self-discovery in a clear and understandable manner or if the grown-up lesson I learned from a children's book was meant just for me. However, I do want to try. I am typing the excerpts from the book in italics, as they are written by the author DuBose Heyward.
One day a little country girl bunny with a brown skin and a little cotton-ball of a tail said, "Some day I shall grow up to be an Easter Bunny: ~ you wait and see!"
What on earth provoked a little brown country girl bunny to make such an epic declaration? Thesaurus offers a selection of words which immediately come to mind: fearless, grandiose, gutsy, gallant, daring, valiant, bigger than life. Like a dormant volcano, something inside her tiny bunny body erupted and out came the lava of fire-eating words.
Then all of the big white bunnies who lived in fine houses, and the Jack Rabbits with long legs who can run so fast, laughed at the little Cottontail and told her to go back to the country and eat a carrot. But she said, "Wait and see!"
Wow...nothing like rejection to steal our thunder and eventually make cowards of us all. One thing I know for sure: I am a country bunny. I have never been affluent, sophisticated or athletic; however, I have always known that I was born to be a writer. Wait and see! No matter how high the rejections letters piled up, I still believed. Wait and see! Even when my family and friends seemed to avoid the subject, I submitted manuscripts and contacted agents. Wait and see! And yet, with each new story and each new round of rejections, I felt as though I should just go somewhere and eat a carrot.
Cottontail stopped thinking about hopping all over the world with lovely eggs for little boys and girls, and she took care of her babies.
I almost cry when I read that sentence in the book. It is so difficult to stop thinking about something that, even as a child, you know is your life's purpose. Despite her reluctant conformity, Mother Cottontail had twenty-one great babies! She taught those babies to clean house, to cook, to sew, to sing and dance, to garden, to color and paint, and most importantly, to have manners. There is nothing on earth like rearing bad-A bunnies ~ teaching them to appreciate art, style, music, food, and nature, showing them how to act in public, fostering originality, creativity and self-confidence ~ a masterpiece of your life's work on display for all to see. Then one day when the little rabbits were half grown up, she heard a great talk among the wood rabbits, and when she asked what it was about, they said, " Haven't you heard? One of the five Easter bunnies has grown too slow, and we are all going to the Palace of the Easter Eggs to see Old Grandfather pick out a new one to take his place."
So Mother Cottontail and all twenty-one of her little bunnies set off to the Palace to see the fun. But their mother was sad because she thought that now she was nothing but an old mother bunny....
An old mother bunny...just when you think that fire-eating lava has turned to ash...Wait and See! Once again, there's nothing like the success of your children to put you back in the driver's seat! When the old, kind, wise Grandfather Bunny saw that Mother Cottontail had been the most loving and efficient mother bunny she could possibly be, he made a declaration of his own!
"You have proved yourself to be not only wise, and kind, and swift, but also very clever. Come to the Palace tomorrow afternoon, for that is Easter Eve, and you shall be my fifth Easter Bunny."
WooHoo!! Wait and See! I could just stop right here and take it all in; however, the story is not quite over and neither is the lesson. At this point, it did not matter that she was brought into a place where she thought she might never belong. She was chosen; she always had been. She was accepted by Grandfather Bunny, and he was the one degree of separation that made all the difference. She was accepted as a brown bunny doing a white bunny's job. She was accepted as a female bunny doing a jack rabbit's job. She was accepted as a country bunny doing an Easter bunny's job!
There she stood in her funny country clothes but none of the other four Easter bunnies laughed, for they were wise and kind and knew better.
Don't you just love complete and total acceptance in its purest form! How gracious we become to others we when we fully recognize our own acceptance in this world. So Cottontail delivered eggs all through the night. When she was almost finished, Grandfather Bunny called her to him. He had one final delivery for her to make: the loveliest egg she had ever seen. She had to carry the egg across two rivers and three mountains to a great mountain peak where a little boy lived who had been sick for a year. Grandfather Bunny told her, "The mountain is so high that there is ice on the top, and it will be hard to climb, but if you get there you will give more happiness than any other Easter Bunny."
What a journey! What a story! She was very tired when at last she got to the bottom of the great peak, and her heart failed her when she saw how high it was, and how slippery with ice and snow on top. When she almost reached the top, a terrible thing happened. Despite all her declarations, dreams, successes, and efforts, Cottontail fell. When the downward spiral finally stopped, she hit the trunk of an apple tree that was just getting ready to bloom for Easter. (I love that part.) The egg was safe, but she could not move. OMG!...story after story after story of my life! She tried to rise again (rise again), because she saw a lovely pink light in the sky and she knew in a few more minutes it would be day...Then she felt something touch her shoulder...there in that distant land was old, wise, kind Grandfather Bunny.
Grandfather Bunny was holding a pair of little gold shoes, which he placed on her feet. Suddenly all the pain left her leg. Then before she knew what was happening...she found herself flying high in the air...and in the hand of the beautiful sleeping boy, she placed the egg.
I just love that line...in the hand of the beautiful sleeping boy, she placed the egg. On the title page of the book ~ underneath the title ~ are the words: As Told To Jenifer. This past week I read an article entitled The Country Bunny by Aida Rogers which stated that DuBose Heyward did not actually tell the original story to his daughter, Jenifer. Jenifer's grandmother, Janie Heyward, first told the bedtime story. The article states that Janie Heyward was a strong-willed, independent-minded, intelligent woman who lived in the shadows, but was very much ahead of her time...and she was a storyteller! She embraced the African-American art of storytelling as each generation passed on stories to the next. She wrote Brown Jackets, a collection of Gullah folktales that she had grown up hearing from servants in her aristocratic white South Carolina home. She also placed the loveliest egg of all in the hand of her beautiful sleeping granddaughter, Jenifer...who, by design, found her own pair of little gold shoes. She grew up to be a professional ballerina who danced with Diaghilev Ballet Russes in France.
And the little house of Mother Cottontail can always be told now from the homes of all other bunnies. Because in a special place on the wall, on a very special hook, hangs a pair of very tiny little gold shoes.
My husband knows that I have been obsessed with this book for almost three weeks. Last Saturday morning, I told him the story. Afterwards, I asked him to give his opinion. He said, "I think that the little gold shoes defy the reality of limited things." I ran and grabbed my notebook to write that down. He continued, "You know...we all have to work, and sometimes, it just seems like work. We do our best with the reality we have, and we find success in limited things. Even though Country Bunny declared at an early age that she would be an Easter Bunny, she had to wait on the provision that would defy her reality. The provision was there the entire time, but she did not waste the waiting period and that is what prepared her when the provision came."
Double OMG! I could not write fast enough. "The little gold shoes represent the point in which we cannot proceed within our own capacity ~ the end of our natural journey. This is the place where the climb becomes too slippery and the fall back down to earth too painful. Then, something unexpected happens, and we are able to rise again! All the boundaries and constraints are lifted by one turn of events, one special touch, one pair of little gold shoes. The place of despair becomes the place where we fly! We defy the reality of limited things! The apple tree blooms, the sky turns pink, and the sun comes up...and we recognize the miracle of it all. It really is the story of Easter."
Wait and See!
Dianne ; )
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