The kids and I sat down to watch "The Velveteen Rabbit" tonight. I read the book as a child, and I'm pretty sure I watched the movie as well.
But I didn't really expect to have such a deep emotional response to a kids movie.
And I didn't really expect my seven, five and almost-four year old to have such a deep emotional response either.
It struck me, as all four of us were crying on the couch watching the moving together, that I don't really give my kids enough credit. They are very deep. They think about things that are important. They struggle with much the same things we do as adults, just differently. They philosophize. They ask questions of things that seem so ordinary.
They feel it deeply when Toby looks like he might die.
They feel it deeply when the bunny gives up his life for Toby.
They feel it deeply when Toby feels abandoned by his father.
They feel it deeply when the rabbit comes to life.
They feel it deeply when they realize that even though Rabbit is alive in the end, it means that Tory won't have his stuffie any more.
And they realized that True Love means giving up your life and letting people go.
In the end, Swan and Horse figure out that it isn't love that made Rabbit real, it was actually loving that made him real. It isn't enough to keep love as a noun - in order to be real, and truly live, we all have to turn love into loving.
Sometimes the simplest concepts are the most difficult to really understand. And what's cool is that my kids kind of got it tonight.
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