for my mom on Mother’s Day

A white rabbit dozes in the shade by our chicken coop. Under the grill, his white son watches the yard warily. The gray son hops from the base of an oak tree to the edge of the timber, while his mother crouches beneath the cage that was her former home. Only the white daughter is missing. Until I spot her ears sticking up from the brush by my husband’s trapping shed.

In the spring of 2017, I bought two rabbits (of unknown gender) for my grandchildren for Easter. And these bunnies lived happily together in their hutch until the morning when I opened the cage to feed them, and there were three hairless babies squirming in the corner. This was when Tiger, the proud father, got a new home. Two had become five! And the five were soon separated, each in his or her own cage.

All winter, I fed, cleaned, and unthawed hundreds of frozen water bottles. Because my grandchildren have recently gotten a new puppy and had long lost interest in the cute bunnies that had grown large and become much less cute, I pronounced that we would let them go, loose them into the wild (the timber that surrounds us). Hearing no protests, I waited until two weeks ago when I was convinced the grass was greening and the weather cooperating. Then I let them go.

I was prepared for a collective bolt for freedom. In those moments before sleep, I had feared for their lives as they were forced to survive in the wild. They needed a Rabbit Grylls (a Bear Grylls for would-be wild rabbits), a helper, a mentor for the transition from kept to independent living.

But alas, I worried for naught. They didn’t bolt. The woods didn’t beckon them. The grass was not greener on the other side. In short, they stayed with what was familiar, often sleeping below the very cages of their captivity. When I woke this morning and looked out of my bedroom window into the backyard, there were Tiger, Cocoa, and their offspring–now official yard rabbits–grazing on the rain-drenched hillside.

Familiarity breeds content, claims writer and columnist Anna Quindlen. The yard rabbits wholeheartedly agree, preferring the familiarity of the mown yard to the tangle of timber that surrounds. They co-exist with the cats and dogs and have become a common sight as I work in the yard or play with the grandkids on the swingset.

Recently on a trip to my family home in Kearney, Nebraska, I found myself seated in the same auditorium I sat in for assemblies during seventh grade. Now renovated into a performing arts center, my old junior high dazzles with a spacious and well-appointed lobby, a remodeled auditorium with cushy seats, and restrooms that look–and smell– nothing like the ones I remember. My mom had taken me to an evening of Barry Manilow’s greatest hits. One of the youngest in the audience, I sat beside my mom and her 80-year old friend, waiting for a Canadian gentleman and his band to take the stage.

Surrounded by senior citizens (oh wait, I am a senior citizen now!), I was taken back to the spring of my seventh grade year when I tried out for cheerleader on the very stage in front of me. I was instantly transported back to those moments when I stood on the wings of the stage, pacing and running through the cheers in my mind in preparation for my tryout.

And then I was in Miss Lindstrom’s math class on a Friday afternoon, listening as she read (in character–beautifully and bizarrely in character) a weekly chapter of Brer Rabbit and the Tar Baby. Long before political correctness, Miss Lindstrom reveled in her weekly oral performances, and we listened, lest she pull out the ruler she used to rap our knuckles.

And when the performance began, the songs of my college years flooded back: Mandy, I Write the Songs, Can’t Smile Without You, It’s a Miracle, Looks Like We Made It–the hits kept coming. I could sing them all, could see myself on the dance floor of Dickie Doogan’s on a Friday night, could feel the way those songs shaped my young adult notions of love and life. It was all so gloriously familiar–the place, the company, the songs.

Pulitzer prize winning author Wallace Stegner writes:

I wonder if ever again Americans can have that experience of returning to a home place so intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to? It is not quite true that you can’t go home again. I have done it, coming back here. But it gets less likely. We have had too many divorces, we have consumed too much transportation, we have lived too shallowly in too many places.

It may be less likely, and perhaps we have lived too shallowly, but like Stegner, I do believe that the familiar draws us back to those places intimately known, profoundly felt, deeply loved, and absolutely submitted to. You can come home again. And when you do, you can leave the shallows for the deep waters of familiarity.

The aspects of things that are most important for us are hidden because of their simplicity and familiarity, writes Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Coming home again, I often find that the very things I took for granted now take on new importance. They shimmer in their simplicity and familiarity. A newly upholstered auditorium seat, a Barry Manilow tune, the scent of your mother beside you. What was hidden before when you were younger and home was a place to launch from is now magnified, awash in colors you had only imagined.

I spent several days with my mom, eating at the same table around which so many family and friends have gathered, sleeping in my old bedroom, sitting on the sofa and looking out at the blue spruce tree that has come into its own magnificence over the years. Home.

The familiar is underrated, I’m afraid. In our quest for bigger, better, and newer, we may turn our backs on the wonders of those familiar people, places, and things that are the essence of home. Truthfully, I think the rabbits have it right. What is familiar has it own unique parameters, and you can find hidden treasures within them for the rest of your life.

For me, my mom represents the best of what is home. Each time I visit, I drink another cup of coffee, for I’m never in a hurry to leave the woman and the place whose familiarity continues to sustain me.

Because I’ve been singing his songs and because he says it so well, I’ll let Barry Manilow have the last words here: