Percy the Rabbit

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

Percy the rabbit is nearly 67 years old. He was given to me by my father on 7th June 1957 when I was 5 days old. He was pink and fluffy.

I slept with him well into my adulthood. So as you may imagine he’s bald, brown, bent, and split. His squeaker stopped working decades ago.

It’s funny isn’t it, in life you can have all these fancy things, beautiful gifts, and yet you’ll treasure a tatty childhood toy and never part with it.

I was a lonely child and I think it was me and Percy against the world. Perhaps when something is placed in your cot as a baby to comfort you, it retains that energy and meaning. He’s tucked away in a cupboard now but I will never part with him. Where I go he goes. Always.

Protection

My first marriage was utterly miserable from two years before we married. My mother was deeply attached to a toxic person because she felt that she could save him. She believed his story that his mother didn’t love him, not true, and he became a cause to which I was sacrificed.

If we argued, which was frequently, she always persuaded me that he was sorry. He told me when we split up that I was a cover for who he really was (not gay…that wouldn’t have been a problem). His parents wanted him married so he got married to shut them up so that he could continue being himself. It was handy that I was young and naïve.

Incidentally:

Naïve is a word often used for someone who’s been so emotionally bullied and shut down, or way over protected, to the point that they can’t think for themselves. They daren’t. That was me. I had zero life experience at 21, and almost none at 34. I didn’t dare upend the apple cart as I couldn’t take anymore emotional abuse. He was a gaslighter.

So when I got into bed I put Percy between us, and felt safer.

When I got my first two cats, Geris slept between me and my ex every night, with all four paws against his back, keeping him away. Marby slept the other side jammed full length against my back. I felt safe. They never once did that once I met Tony. That really made me think. What did they know?

It’s why I don’t underestimate animals. Think they’re not as intelligent as us. I think they got us beat all hands down.

Always

Oddly, apart from him and the cats, I can’t think of one single thing from my youth or even middle age (which I’m still claiming) that I was attached to. Which is rather nice as I’ve had some fancy stuff in my time yet that old stuffed rabbit trumps everything but my cats.

Oh, and my doll Susan who will be 65 this year. And no, wonky eye or not, she won’t be retiring any time soon.

That feels rather nice. Objects can actually tell you quite a lot about yourself.

People think they’re just stuff. Dad’s been gone since 1999, Percy is still here, and I can imagine my tall, dark, handsome father gently placing him in my cot and standing looking down at me. You can’t buy that, but you can leave your daughter with a little rabbit for her, always.

Deb xx