a dog bop is real.

a couple of mornings ago, as will and i sat snuggling on the couch, taking in a mickey mouse as the sun rose, we giggled and talked boppy talk as usual ("woof woof! dog boppy needs some yovin'! dog boppy is thirsty!"). suddenly, my boy's face turned serious, and his eyes rested heavily on mine.

"you know, mommy, dog boppy's not real."

my heart cracked in that moment, the way a mother's heart is bound to crack hundreds, probably thousands of times as she watches her child grow up. no, i thought. not yet.

"dog boppy is real, will, because you love him and i love him and he lives in our hearts. that makes him real."

"but he doesn't talk and eat and drink like we do, mommy."

"you're right, he doesn't talk and eat and drink like we do. but that doesn't make him any less real."

by then, mickey mouse had stolen will's attention back again, and our conversation faded away, and the day rushed on. but it stayed with me, and i've thought about it a lot. see, i wasn't just trying to make my boy feel better when i told him that his dog boppy is real, and i wasn't just trying to stop the inevitable slip of his innocence that comes with age and experience. a part of me - maybe all of me - does believe that dog boppy is real. tonight, as i was staring into his little sewn-on black eyes on his floppy blue body, cradled tightly in my son's sleeping arms, i realized that dog boppy might be even more real than some people i've met in this world. people who talk and eat and drink just like we do.

of course, i'm reminded of that famous passage from "the velveteen rabbit," which is so often quoted, but deserves to be repeated just one more time, in this space, for my boy and his dog bop.


"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 all 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."


yes, my boy. dog bop is real. your love is real, and so is it's magic.  it's made me believe all over again.