Velveteen Rabbit

With the College closing in May, we are making lots of final arrangements for things. As exciting as I thought it might be to tell vendors "sorry we can't pay you thousands of dollars for this tiny overpriced service, because we are closing!," I am finding that I am really pretty sad.

Today I canceled all of our periodical subscriptions. The library gets about 250 subscriptions. Managing subscriptions to periodicals is like herding cats. They arrive when they arrive. Sometimes they never arrive. Sometimes the arrive out of order. Sometimes they are never published and then they are suddenly published years later. This year one of our main suppliers of magazines had a glitch and about 1/3 of our subscriptions were sent so an address in Texas. They are random. And when you do something like cancel them, it throws everything in to chaos. For instance, if there is ever a school at this address again - I think it might be really difficult to receive subscriptions. Periodicals have a life and character of their own. As the periodicals arrive in the mail they seem to "know things" but they know all the wrong things, and with this address being marked "closed" to our subscription suppliers - I am thinking that may never be able to be erased.

Yesterday I was working the circulation desk and thinking about the school closing and the cancellation of all of these periodicals. I was struck with a wave of deep deep sadness and tears came to my eyes. Very unprofessional, to be crying in the library. But the incident reminded me of the story of Velveteen Rabbit and becoming real. I never wanted to be a librarian, and I have never considered myself a REAL librarian, but when you shed more than a couple of tears over the cancellation of periodicals - I think that means you are a real librarian. Maybe you "become" a librarian. Maybe, "it takes a long time."

Here is what REAL means in the Velveteen Rabbit.

"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 suppose you are real?" said the Rabbit. And then he wished he had not said it, for he thought the Skin Horse might be sensitive. But the Skin Horse only smiled.

This is the "anxious times" image from the book.