Matthew can now “read” Goodnight, Moon (with a little bit of prompting). He did so tonight.  After he’d finished, we turned to the back cover, which showed a picture of the book The Runaway Bunny. And I got an idea.
“Do you want to read this book?” I asked him, pointing to it.
“Yes,” he said.
I reached up to the top shelf of his bookcase (otherwise known as the Safe Zone, where I keep nice hardcover editions, his piggy bank, and other things I don’t yet trust him to treat gently). There it was: a pristine hardback copy of The Runaway Bunny. I’d bought it for him on his first Christmas, when he was just a few months old. I’d written a little message inside. And, high up on the shelf and out of reach, it had fallen off of my radar, even though he’s been old enough to understand it for several months now.
So we sat on the big story pillow on the floor, and I read the story of the bunny who wants to run away and the mommy who promises to do everything in her power — or everything out of it, actually – to find him again. It was a deeply comforting book to me when I was a kid, and these days, it makes me even more emotional.
Because now I have a little Matthew bunny of my own. And now I understand, more than ever before,  the love that drives that Mommy bunny to promise — and believe she can do – the impossible.
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