I got choked up when I read the last part of The Velveteen Rabbit – you know, the part about him being real. That was a long time ago; I still feel my eyes brim when I think about it. Of late, though, sometimes I stand at the window, looking straight out down the street to where people look so very small when they come walking up, and I realize that out of the shimmer of distance, the one figure with a characteristic walk that I so want to see is not going to appear.

For a long time, it was my dearest dream; it was just there, unchanging. And then time happened and because it passed where I couldn’t see its clock, I didn’t grasp the process. It was if this hoped for moment was always there, just a breath or so away.

But it’s not there and I feel so sad. It’s not ever going to be real, no matter how long I hold out for it. The time has passed, but I am having so much trouble stepping out of that past.

I think there are times when I pretend it’s almost real – that if I walk faster, I will catch up to it, if I give it my all, it will be. Just a little faster, AmeliaJake, a little more desperate effort and you’ll turn a corner and see it in the catch-able distance. Maybe that pretending is a form of it being real to me. I don’t think it hurts anyone to harbor that fake realness.

I think that is why I write this – because I cannot just let it not be real when I so need it to be real, if only in my heart.