imagine alike.
What do you see when you look at this picture?
This is a picture of a house on our way home.
Twelve hours west of here there is a house just like this. My carpool passed this house on our way to elementary school every weekday for five years.
I had the same thought each and every time we passed the house.
In June of 1987 my family moved across the country marking the end of my relationship that facade.
So when Nate and I moved into our current house, I was surprised to discover a house that reminded me of the house that fascinated my early imagination. But not nearly as surprised as the day that Ava called out from the backseat, “Look, Mama, that house has a bunny on it.”
Yes, a bunny. The same bunny I first saw twenty-five years ago.
Do you see it now?
None of the carpool kids ever saw him, and I have since quizzed Nate and other various passengers. The response is generally the same, “Oh, now that you mentioned” or “I don’t think I would have noticed it.”
I didn’t just noticed it, I befriended him. At first Mr. Bricks was just a street-side friend that I would wave to and check in with as I was strapped in the back of station wagon. Eventually I started imagining stories about the people who lived there and the person who had built the house. Was it a memorial to a beloved childhood bunny who had contracted rabies and died a long, painful death or was it an engraving that marked a shrine to all things bunny? Or was the house inhabited solely by a family of rabbits? I mean, really, why else would you outlay your bricks in a hare-like formation?
And now that my mind is preoccupied with pressing matters–like why my soy chai costs fifty cents extra than a milk chai when soy is actually cheaper than milk thanks to the pressing demand of corn for ethanol. And is ethanol really a worthy pursuit? And more importantly, why is anyone feeding corn to cows anyway, they should be eating grass!–the heir to my imagination has resumed my old relationships with inanimate objects.
Ava greets her bunny friend every time she sees him. “Look Mama, the bunny is waving at me. He’s a nice bunny isn’t he?”
Who knew that seeing bunnies in brick chimneys is encrypted in DNA?
hi Rachel , I really like reading your blog.I miss you.I couldn’t see the bunny because my eyes went to the x. hugs from merrie jo
seriously, i don’t see a bunny, where is it? shanel
okay, i finally see it. I polled some people here in the office, and unfortunately for me, everyone except for 1 person saw the bunny right away. Does that mean I’m not creative or something?!:) shanel
I saw the bunny after you pointed it out… That is so funny that both you and Ava saw a bunny (wow, now I am a poet!) when you looked at that house. She has her mommy’s great imagination, huh?? That is sweet!!!
Oh that’s really funny & cute that you and Ava think so much alike.
After I read your question about looking for something in the picture, I thought, “Oh no. They both see a bunny in the bricks!” Sure enough.
What a magical story. Absolutely amazing–I got goosebumps while reading it. Unfortunately, my eyes and my spirit aren’t as open to such beautiful and creative imagination (read: I can’t see the bunny.), but I am so thrilled that imagination is alive and well in our children. What a neat thing to have passed along to your daughter…and how great that you have a bunny house near your adult house, too, so that you could discover yet another way in which Ava is so much like her Mama.
I looked at that photo loooong and hard and could see no bunny. But I just tapped into my child-like creative side and was FINALLY able to see it. Whew. I was worried there for a minute.
rachel, I always saw the bunny when i was little, too. it may even have been that house in the picture, because i grew up not too far from where you live. i think it’s awesome that ava is kind of person that sees the bunny, because it’s nice to have things in common with people you call family. it’s what makes you family – apart from that DNA stuff, of course.