I am Real..........

"What is Real?" asked the rabbit one day.

"Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you're made", said the skin horse. "It's a thing that happens to you.....and it doesn't happen all at once".

"You become".

"It takes a long time".

"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 ever be ugly except to the people that don't understand".



With my apologies to Margery Williams and the Velveteen Rabbit I am here to tell all of you that I am so very Real.

I have been Real for several years now and I wouldn't trade anything in the world for it.

I may be 48 years old and a tad tubby. I may have slowed down and I may hurt all the goddamned time so that I want to cry........but I am so very Real and am therefore so very Happy.

I sometimes look in the mirror and don't recognize the person I am looking at - but when I gaze inward at how I feel and what I know, I am quite simply amazed at how fulfilled I have become and how second nature it is for me now.

I have gone from the "one day I will" to the point where I live my dreams each and every day.

So I thank you Paige. For all of that. I also thank all of you other folks out there that are my cloud of witnesses. For within each of you I find a piece of who I am and even sometimes who I'd like to be tomorrow - the Lord willing and the creek don't rise!

And in the end, when it's over - whenever that may be.......all I truly want to be said was that I was Real. Authentic. Genuine. But mostly, I want it said that I loved with wreckless abandon.

Peace.