My Two-legged Bunny

I left behind my career as a clinical psychologist in early 2018. However, I have yet to relinquish the chief tenet which guided my work throughout the preceding thirty-five years: psychological insight, forged with an inevitable price, is necessary for a searching examination of one’s past, present and future. This “study of the self” is imperative for personal growth and necessary for healing the wounds of the soul.

But because I am no longer in the business of providing “psychodynamic psychotherapy,” as it is commonly called, any behaviors or motivations I find myself analyzing these days are squarely my own. And I have to admit that I do it a great deal. The analyst in me has neither taken a break, nor died.

Nevertheless, self-analysis wasn’t on my agenda when I hiked up the stairs to my study last Saturday afternoon. There was no inner voice nudging me with: Why did you do that? Or the other question I often heard: What does this mean? Both of these are generally said in a tone that resonates with a bang whenever I try to puzzle through a particular problem or concern.

My thoughts on this day had been focused on the more mundane: I was going to check in on Monty, the aged bunny who had recently taken up permanent residence in our home. Measuring his progress as he recuperated from a bout of “pink eye,” which had been diagnosed the morning before, was the point of my trip upstairs to his cage, located right beside my desk. He had belonged to and been nurtured by my daughter for nearly all of his nine years, and so I was taken totally by surprise when a simple eye check at the vet’s morphed into something far more evocative: suddenly I was making a trip down an emotional rabbit hole that led straight to my past.

Are you okay, baby? I whispered to Monty, as I crouched low and stared into his big browns. I’d laughed then, remembering how after discovering the eye issue, I had rushed him to an animal hospital specializing in the treatment of exotics. “I’ve been watching to be sure that he’s eating,” I’d reported, in a voice filled with anxiety. “But I’m worried about him.”

Of course, that wasn’t the whole story. I was fretting, too, about whether I would be judged as having botched the job that I had signed up for so willingly: I had become the Bunny Mom. Hoping to demonstrate that I was, in fact, cotton-tail savvy, I rattled on to the vet about how Monty hadn’t appeared sluggish, or agitated, and was continuing to produce plenty of poop.

However, when the doc just smiled and asked, “have you had him very long?” I was compelled to confess that even though Monty himself was quite ancient in rabbit years. I was still very new to the “bun-bun” game. “Well, he’s been living with my daughter all this time and she’s out in L.A.,” I explained, before blathering on further about her recent visit to us with Monty and her ten-year old corgi in tow. It was then that she told us the rental agreement on her new digs had changed: the clause in the contract that would have allowed her to keep the rabbit indoors had been inked out of the contract.

“The only option she had was to house him in a hutch in the yard,” I told him. Still nervous, I moved closer to the examination table and stroked the back of my newly acquired Flemish Giant mix. Caressing his soft fur, fortunately, helped me to shut up.

Now, as I put the drops prescribed by the vet in his eyes, a new thought occurred: What if Dr. Roberts had been thinking about more than he’d allowed me to see? Had he, for example, viewed me as an easy touch? Someone who simply didn’t know how to say “no” to her adult child?

As I sat and watched Monty nibble on his timothy hay, I remembered something else, too: the long-distance call I’d had two weeks earlier with my girl, who was devastated at losing her pet. It was a call during which she’d once more thanked me effusively for my willingness to come to her aid—for my offer to take Monty into our home, even before she’d had to consider whether to place him with a stranger or to keep him outdoors. “Bunnies are such vulnerable creatures, Mom,” Grace reminded me, with a catch in her voice. “And really easy prey if they’re not well-protected.”

In the quiet of the room, these words now echoed in my mind. How many times had I worried about my baby girl in much the same way I now worried about Monty—albeit that my concern for the animal fell on a much smaller scale? Although she had become a vivacious young woman who was emotionally sturdy, Grace was still my child, one who had battled crippling anxiety and suicidal depression in late adolescence; she had been a girl who worked hard to forge her way into an easier adulthood. But wasn’t she was still “easy prey,” the very same words she had used to describe her beloved rabbit?

Another memory emerged then: a bleak February day eleven years ago—a time when Grace was still struggling. Our relationship at the time was terribly fraught, colored by my worry for her, as well as her despair and anger with me. As she fought to trust me, I fought to keep her from shutting me out.

Accompanying this recollection, a stark image returned: Grace, curled in a fetal position on our family room sofa, barely able to talk. What should she do about the rambunctious shelter dog she’d adopted the week before as she’d tried to pull herself out of a very dark place? At twenty-one, and with her baccalaureate degree nearly in hand, she had just moved into her first apartment only to discover that managing daily life was overwhelming her; she just didn’t have the time or energy required to care for a frisky pup.

“What do you want to do, Grace?” I asked in a low voice.

“I don’t give a damn! Just give her away!”

She kept right on sobbing. This was not the voice of the girl I had raised, the kid whose animal menagerie had included a well-loved dog and a special-needs cat, as well as a large assortment of hamsters and guinea pigs. Grace had always been the kid on the block who would gladly have lived at PetSmart.

And then, I saw it: my fragile daughter was crying not only about the pup’s perceived fate, but also from her fear of abandonment. Who would take care of her if she became a problem? Wouldn’t it be all too easy to discard her, as well?

These were the sorts of emotions that had first roared to the surface when she’d been a teen, and they were now, sadly enough, present for a good reason: I had not been truly available to help her adjust to a major life change—my decision, after many years as a single parent, to remarry. It didn’t matter, in retrospect, that my intentions were only to be a good mother; or that I was distracted by new love.

I didn’t anticipate that this choice to join my life with somebody else’s would set off such a chain reaction in my daughter, a teenager who had already lost her father. I’d followed my own path and, in doing so, had unintentionally made hers even more difficult. And while we had found our way back to one another in the years that followed, the transition from college to the adult world had reawakened Grace’s feelings of abandonment.

“No, baby,” I answered, trying to soothe her by overriding her sobs. “After a while you’ll see how much you want to keep her. Now let’s see what we can do to make you feel better.” Leaning over her shoulder so that she could pick up on my tenderness, I added, “Fannie Mae stays, even if that means I keep her here.” I had taken an important step: linking the way the puppy was now a part of our lives, the same way Grace would always be in our hearts.

“Fannie Mae is family.” I underlined the image with my voice, so that she couldn’t miss it. “And we’re not the kind of people who just let family float away.”

Looking back over that emotionally overwhelming afternoon with Grace so long ago, I realized that my hang-out this day with Monty in my study was not only sweet—but important. Just the way a therapy session can be productive, that hour with my rabbit afforded me an insight I hadn’t fully appreciated before. So, what was the takeaway from all these memories? Actually, I realized with surprise, there was more than one.

First: as a Mama, I am not someone who can easily be taken advantage of. And, even if I were a soft touch, I’m lucky, because Grace isn’t wired to treat anyone as prey. Second: when it matters, I am always able to reach out to my girl with compassion as the bridge beneath my feet. In the end, it appears that I do know how to take care of bunnies, after all—both the four-legged and the two-legged varieties.