Molly Moves Out

Asher recently shoved this book into my lap. It was my favorite childhood book, and I was surprised to see it because I was sure it was back living at my mom's house, not with Skippy Jon Jones and Flat Stanley in the boys' bookshelf. So I read and reminisced.

Molly is the big sister rabbit of many little rabbits. She tries to be a patient and loving big sister, but her younger bunny siblings constantly destroy her belongings and invade her privacy. Finally, she is fed up and moves across the meadow to a little bunny cottage built for one where she discovers the bliss of a family-free existence.

As a child, I was Molly, minus the patience. Every year or two a new little bunny would arrive at the hutch, and I would have to cling a little tighter to my stuff, and search out another quiet corner to call my own. My brand new first-day-of-school notebooks would inevitably be scribbled in. Little fingers would rip out the tape from my cassettes and wind it around my room like party streamers. One year, my youngest sister even unwrapped all of my birthday presents.

That book was a shining light of hope. Hope that I might someday be able to move away and enjoy a peaceful life full of picking berries, baking giant carrot cakes, and enjoying long swims in a pond (I'm not even sure I had worked out the non-rabbit equivalent of independent living at that point). When Steven Kellogg (illustrator of the book) came to my elementary school, I proudly had him sign my copy of Molly. Getting that book signed was the sealing of my fate. It would happen. I would find a life away from the hutch. Steven Kellogg said so!

And he was right. I did move to a little cottage on the other side of the meadow. And I miss all of them ..... Dave, Jeff, Katie & Kelli ...... terribly.