Doodles

When I was about CR's age, maybe a little older, I had a special dolly: Doodles. Doodles went everywhere with me and her absence even caused a trip to grandma's at 3am after I forgot her (she was taking a nap). Now she is living in Colorado and CR "found" her this week.
One of my favorite children's stories is The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams. Father O'Heron talked about it in at least one of his sermons and I always thought he was taking about Doodles. Her body is gray, the bow in her hair is frayed, gray and more than half missing. Her head is floppy and I have been told by many that she is "ugly". But everytime I see her I am always reminded about this part of the story...

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. 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 be ugly, except to people who don't understand.

I think that she is real.

So does CR...