Becoming Real

I want to feel Real, like the Skin Horse in the Velveteen Rabbit, which is one of my all-time favorite books. Most of the time I do, but I am convinced that it is going the be the love of a child -- my child -- that makes me feel really, truly, unconditionally, irretrievably, Real.

I feel one step closer today, though!!

I got my official dossier package from my agency, which means that I am off and running on the paper chase. This paper chase is going to have a bit of a slow start however, because the first big piece is the homestudy, which can't really get rolling until I have a home to study. (Mid-January, at the earliest.)

But, as the Skin Horse says, becoming Real doesn't happen overnight:

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand."