Your grandpa and I had been dating for a few months, and we were already in love. We had been in love for a long time then; he knew it, and I didn't. When you're older I'll tell you that story, Liz.
Today I'm going to tell you about the "BIG" moment I knew that I would marry your grandpa, and we would have children, a girl first and then a boy and then another girl; your mother and then your Uncle Dan and then your Aunt Sarah. Well, I didn't know how many children and their names, but I knew that I would have them, and that I would be Mrs. Halpert.
Are you expecting hearts and flowers, Liz? Are you expecting an "I love you" or a "Will you marry me?" Then you are not thinking about your Grandpa Jim. Your Grandpa Jim, the goofiest grandpa of all time.
So the moment I knew your mother would come along was the moment your grandpa made a ridiculous looking stuffed bunny talk to me in a toy store.
We were shopping for a baby gift for your mom's cousin Brandon, your grandpa's nephew. Grandpa Jim was just as good an uncle as he is a grandpa, and every bit as silly and fun. So of course he was looking for a silly and fun gift to buy baby Brandon along with the practical, nice gift I made him buy, which I don't remember exactly but I know was something they had registered for.
Your grandpa wanted to buy the baby a toy. I tried to talk him out of it, because Brandon was the third child of Grandpa's brother John, and there were plenty of toys already in the house. Plus, new babies don't play with toys, right? But you know your grandpa. Any excuse to look for silly things, to get a laugh out of me.
So we went down the toy aisle. He wanted a stuffed animal, one that wasn't girly, since Brandon was the first (and only) boy in the family. It's been so many years, I don't remember all the exact words we said. But it went something like this:
"This baby won't play with a stuffed animal for months, and anyway, their house is overrun with stuffed animals, Jim."
"Yeah, but they're all pink and stuff. Girly."
"So, what? We're going to get him a stuffed snake or something?"
"Great idea when he's older. But a snake might scare him now."
Have you seen me look at your grandpa like he's grown another head, but I'm starting to laugh too? That's how I looked at him then. And then I said something like, "It doesn't matter, Jim. Did you know he can only see, like, four feet in front of his face right now? Anything we buy him is just going to look.....hazy."
"So you're telling me the sky's the limit."
He was picking up every stuffed animal that wasn't pink, squishing them and holding them out for me to feel and exclaim over. He was in a silly mood that day, can you tell from this story? But I was hungry, I remember that, and we were going to go out for dinner after we shopped, so I tried to hurry him up. "I think that brown bear is nice."
"Pam. C'mon. Too predictable."
"OK, how about that penguin."
"Too many hard parts for a baby. He'll hit himself in the eye with the beak."
"Alright, the cat."
"Stuffed cats are girly."
"How can cats be......"
"They just are, Pam. I'm disappointed in your lack of imagination when it comes to stuffed animals....."
I was really hungry and getting crabby. "The dalmation."
He picked it up and I thought we'd be on our way to dinner. But he squished it and made a face. "There's not enough stuffing in it. Here, feel it." And I did, though I didn't want to. I remember that too.
"The bear wearing the football helmet. Can't get more boyish than that."
"How do you know he'll like football? What if he takes after me and likes basketball?"
I know your grandpa's goofy moods when I see them, which is kinda often So I looked over the selections and found this hideous, ridiculous looking purple bunny shoved way on the top shelf behind a stuffed pig. It was a medium size, lavendar, probably a reject from Easter. It had ears that flopped way down to it's bunny feet. But the most unusual thing about it was that it looked crazy. It had eyes that goggled, you know, the parts jiggle inside it, and long whiskers and and bunny eyebrows. Yes, eyebrows that were permanently raised, like it was always surprised with it's googly eyes wobbling.
I had already started to laugh when I handed it to him. "Here. This one is perfect."
"OH my......Beesly, you've outdone yourself." He called me by my last name then, sometimes. Mostly when we were joking around, which was often.
So he took that bunny and he made his voice high-pitched, like the bunny was talking, and told me story after story about what had happened to that bunny to make it look like that. And I was still hungry but not crabby because I was laughing so hard.
He stopped, finally even your grandpa ran out of ideas for stories about the Crazy Purple Bunny. But he held it in his hands and smiled down at it, petting it's long, long ears.
And that's when I knew. I even saw her, your mom and our first child, for just a minute standing beside him, reaching up for the bunny, laughing. Yes, I saw her, and I knew your mom would have dark hair like his and not auburn like mine.
No, Lizzie, I'm not psychic. I can't tell futures. That's what makes this story a "BIG" moment: it was one of the rare moments of life—and believe me, they are rare—when you have perfect clarity. That means, things are perfectly clear. But you're probably smart enough to know that.
I knew I would marry your grandpa, and I knew we would have children, a girl first. And I knew it because of a purple stuffed bunny that looked crazy, which was a perfect way of knowing for your grandpa and I.
He turned to me and said, "What?" This part I remember to the word.
"Nothing." I looked down at my shoe, because I wanted to tell him but I didn't know how.
"Doesn't look like 'nothing'." I think I looked really serious, and that worried him for awhile after we started dating. And I thought about the coal walk....another story for a different day, when you're older...and about being what he called "Fancy New Beesly".
So I looked at him and I loved him so much. I loved him enough to take another chance. "You're going to be a great dad someday."
He frowned, and he didn't say a thing for awhile. "Thanks."
And I looked him all the way in his eyes—you'll know about that when you're older—and I said, "Our first will be a girl, I think."
Can you believe I said that? But I did. He could have put that bunny down and ran out of the store screaming. A lot of men would, Liz. But he didn't. Instead he smiled and kissed me right in the middle of the aisle with that bunny squished between us. Then he said, "We're buying this bunny. Not for Brandon. For our daughter."
"No way, Jim. No child of ours is ever going to see that bunny."
So we packed it away, but your aunt found it in the attic and actually put it in her bed. Then one year she had the flu and got sick on it, and we threw it away. Anyway, it's not the bunny that's the "BIG" part of this story, is it?
That's one of my big moments, Liz. A moment when you just know is always a big moment. A moment when you can share that knowing with someone you love is HUGE. Trust me on that.
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
I read it over to myself. Definitely not what Liz is looking for, but she's getting it anyway, on her eighteenth birthday, or maybe high school graduation. So I fold it up, handwrite a note about how this was meant for her seventh grade assignment but turned out differently, put it in an envelope marked "FOR LIZ, ON HER 18th BIRTHDAY" and tuck it in my memento drawer. I'm not that old, but still. At my age, you mark things clearly.
Now I'll get started on that essay. I'll write about the first piece of artwork I made that sold and earned me money; I know that's what she's hoping for. Later, later....she'll get the real moment.
I finish the essay in half the time it took me to write the letter, and tell Jim about both as we wind the neighborhood on our daily walk. We reminisce about the bunny, but only for a few minutes. We enjoy looking back, but only looking back and never forward is for very, VERY old people. We're not there yet.
He links his hand in mine and we walk, as we do every morning, in comfortable bouts of conversation and quiet.
Recorderalways is the author of 7 other stories.
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