Our most beloved

posted by Jeanne Munn Bracken

As "mentioned" here in the past, my kids have moved out. For some reason the cable bill hasn't gone down much, but the electric bill is cut in half. I never knew TVs and DVD players used so much "juice".

The kids took both bookcases from my office. That was ok. They took the dining room table. That was ok. They took the living room couch. That was so OK that I paid a mover to haul it over there. They took the big mixer from the kitchen counter, which has to be ok, since I gave it to a daughter for Christmas a year or two ago.

They have also, at various times, "borrowed" the good vacuum, both step stools, my bread machine, and of course, money. That was all ok, since I expect to get it all back. But in the light of day, one daughter snagged my Betty Crocker picture cookbook from 1961.

That. Is. Not. Acceptable. I missed it right away and had to call her to find out how long to steam snow peas. Of course she didn't answer. I found out later that she heard the call but didn't bother to pick up because I could "google it." Sigh.

Which is why I found my trusty old cookbook on my desk the other morning at work. Returned while I wasn't looking. Smart kids. It turns out that in 1961 Betty Crocker didn't know from steaming any veggies, let alone snow peas. I made it up as I went along, and they were fine.

But I was bemused to see the ratty, grease-stained, dough-encrusted, missing-the-spine cookbook among the pretty new library books on my desk.  I tucked it in my tote bag, out of sight, and when I mentioned later to a friend how battered the book is, she nodded.

"Oh, it's a Velveteen Rabbit," she said.

Of course it is. I have always love that story and can't finish it without crying, which is why I don't read it aloud to visiting kiddies. And why I bought my very own stuffed Velveteen Rabbit last Easter.  My BFF confided that the book was banned from her childhood home, since she grew so hysterical it took hours to calm her down. I totally get that.

And I got to thinking. What other of my books are so well-loved and so battered? None come even close. My Bartlett's Familiar Quotations is well-used but unbloodied and unbowed. My books of poetry, ditto. I don't re-read novels much, although when I do, I have almost always forgotten how the story turned out, so it's a whole new experience each time. Except with Gone with the Wind, which is one of my all-time faves, although nothing can recapture the angst I felt and the rare tears I shed when I first read it at the age of 13, the summer my parents ripped me away from everything familiar and moved the family to a small town in New Hampshire, where we were sort of the local aliens.

The only book that comes close to the Betty Crocker's condition is my King James Bible, the Masonic one that belonged to my father, who died suddenly when I was four. I have hauled that Bible from church camp to church camp, women's retreat to women's retreat, youth group meeting to youth group meeting. I'm not a holy roller by any means, but I do love the KJV. I might not understand what the heck those prophets were saying, but I loved the words they used.

So...do you have favorites? What's your Velveteen Rabbit?

Comments

[Lorraine]

Jeanne, my favorite of all the hundred or so cookbooks I own is the Betty Crocker cookbook my mother gave me when I was 12. It has just about all the basic cooking advice you need (and some of the most simple recipes). Its spine is half gone, and it's encrusted with old cookie dough and grease splatters and I love it. I've been trying to find another copy at a garage sale so I have one in reserve in case this one completely falls apart.

[Shel Franz]

My "velveeteen rabbit" is The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I have read that, and re-read it, til my hardback copy fell apart. I was so glad when they reissued it for the movie they did (loosely) based on it, The Secret of Moonacre.