Shortly before Christmas last year I found myself hit with tumultuous waves of emotional upheaval. Most of it having been brought on by the marriage of my daughter in mid-December and the resulting change in our family dynamic. My three married children and four grandchildren all live in other states; the closest is almost 1000 miles away. I see them fairly frequently but not all holidays are spent together. They have the in-laws to see, also. I respect that but it doesn't help much to mitigate the sadness in not spending those times with the entire family. Such is life. It is not static and does not revolve around me.

It's not good to harbor resentments or regrets but I was having difficulty with just this on Christmas Eve. A memory surfaced of an Easter when I was 9 or 10 years old. There was a young family with two kids ages 2 and 3 living on our block. I liked to play with them occasionally. On that particular Saturday before Easter I had gone to their house to visit and noticed the bunny hutch in their backyard. It was an old pen that a year or two before had housed a duckling given to me on a previous Easter. Some months later I had been convinced to turn the by then mature duck loose at the Duck Pond and had done so but still missed my "Quacky". Yeah, I know, but I was only 7 or 8 years old.

I made mention to the mother of the children that the pen had housed my duck. She said my father had given them the pen and ALSO THE BUNNY RABBIT inside the pen. I cannot begin to express the disappointment and anger I felt with my dad at having given the rabbit to these kids and not to me. I went home and proceeded to have a hissy fit at my father. I remember him explaining the rabbit had been given to him by someone and he thought since we had found it necessary to give the duck away the same situation would arise with the rabbit so better not to have it at all. He thought he would give the "problem" to the neighbors circumventing any potential difficulty arising. In his mind.

I had wanted a bunny for some time and was tremendously disappointed he had given my rabbit away without consulting me. I remember I went to my room and sulked. Sometime later that day he came and knocked on my door to give me a giant stuffed rabbit he had gone out to purchase for me. His intent, I'm sure, was to make up for the bunny he had given away. It didn't wash in my mind. I looked at the rabbit, looked at him and then took the toy rabbit from him and promptly marched over to the neighbor's house and gave the toy to the kids.

I hadn't though much about this incident in the intervening years but the memory was brought back fresh Christmas Eve when I found myself harboring resentments. NEVER a healthy thing to do. My husband and I had talked about it and that had helped a great deal. But what really assuaged my raw feelings was what I saw when I went to the front door early Christmas morning to turn out the porch light that had been lit all night. In the deep early morning twilight I spotted on the front walk, not 10 feet from my front door, a small brown bunny rabbit sitting quietly, waiting to be spotted by me, who needed the consolation.