by Nancy Laracy
My life, and my family’s, was turned upside down. The next few years were spent enduring one medical treatment after another. Whether mainstream or holistic, whatever I thought might possibly help, I tried. My extended Buchalski family helped out with household chores, food shopping, and meal preparation while I reserved what little energy I had for my two children and husband, the primary reasons why I woke up most mornings with the will to continue.
There were many times, however, when I wanted to give up. The pain ravaged my entire body. In the early years, there were times when I could barely touch the skin on my chest and extremities due to the burning and extreme sensitivity. The fatigue was crushing—like someone had unplugged my energy source. I reached for my faith once again to guide me through the difficult days, fully expecting to wake up from the nightmare. But it seemed like I never would. With time, the dream simply faded into the distance, tucked in the back of my mind, reminding me of my limits.
After what felt like an eternity, I began to experience periods of relative wellness followed by periodic setbacks. I continued to raise my children under difficult circumstances, letting the nonessential things slip by. I knew the delivery people from the pharmacy, supermarket, and takeout restaurants by their first names. Sunday mass, family gatherings, holiday events, and birthday parties got top priority. Most fibromyalgia patients keep fighting to maintain some sense of normalcy in their lives by hiding their pain and pushing through it—and that was exactly what I did. Meanwhile, I focused intensely on regaining my health by incorporating a regular routine of physical therapy, chiropractic treatment, and a much healthier diet.
Now, at age forty, I felt better, stronger, and ready to think about having another baby before it was too late. I had earned it. I had worked hard to put myself in a place where I could build a larger family like I had always wanted. But once again, my illness and now my husband were reminding me that I had my limits.
This made me mad—at Ward and at the whole world. I was angry that I had gotten sick. I was angry that I might have to give up my lifelong dream of having four children. And, just like every other time I’d gone head to head with my diseases, I was determined to push the envelope and demand the most out of life, no matter what the chronic pain had to say about it. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but I knew I wasn’t going to give up.
And then, something did happen. At 9 p.m. on the evening of our conversation, it started to snow, continuing throughout the night. The firehouse sirens had gone off, signaling no school. The airwaves were filled with ominous warnings not to travel unless absolutely necessary. But I felt comforted by the storm. In my world, the worst had already happened, which I have learned can be very liberating. Everything is less frightening somehow when the other shoe has already dropped.
• • •
The next morning, I peered out the window of our cozy Georgian colonial, small by Franklin Lakes standards but lovable and warm, and to me, who had grown up in a small Cape Cod with four siblings, practically palatial. Our neighborhood was blanketed in pristine winter white. The snowflakes were large, fluffy, and relentless. The wind had already blown the snow into great drifts, creating a transformed mystical landscape in our backyard. The lanterns on the porch were translucent, covered in thick snow with just a hint of light shining through.
“Snow day! Snow day!” my kids shouted at the top of their lungs, rushing into the kitchen. They had slept with their pajamas inside out the night before, a superstition which was supposed to guarantee them a snow day. They giggled gleefully and gave each other a high five, overjoyed that their brand of special magic had worked like a charm.
I was as excited as my children to have a snow day. I love winter. The season was the backdrop for some of my fondest memories, and it offered many opportunities for themed baking and family gatherings, both passions of mine. I loved most winter sports, or at least I did until I got sick. But today was a good day, and I felt like I could do anything in the world if I wanted to badly enough. I was in the mood for an adventure. And the kids and I had a whole day to figure out what it would be.
I walked to the fridge and pulled out the Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls—a snow day tradition passed on from my mother, who taught me most of what I know about making a moment feel special. My mother was strong, independent, feisty, and as resourceful as they come; but she was also extremely sentimental and she had a great sense of playfulness. As a nurse who cared for the elderly, she somehow raised five children while being the sole caretaker for my chronically ill Dad and little brother. Yet she always found time to lend a hand to anybody in our neighborhood who needed help. Both of my parents had an amazing way of keeping us together as a family. Whether it was going to Goody’s, the first fast food burger joint in our town, or piling all of us into one hotel room so we could afford a weekend family getaway, we always made the most of what we had. And now, no matter how many obstacles we had to face, my family, too, always found a way to make the best of things.
Julie and Chris settled in the family room on separate sofas, munching on their cinnamon buns. Julie was wrapped in her favorite leopard blanket, Chris in his prized cheetah print. The sun made a brief appearance, bursting through the clouds to show a brilliant and blue sky, making the trees sparkle like they had been spray-painted with white glitter. I started daydreaming about Julie and Chris as babies in snowsuits, pulled along by Ward on their flexible flyer up the little hill so they could sled down again, their cheeks rosy and noses running from the cold. Where had the time gone?
I had gotten very good at daydreaming over the last few years—because I’d had to. Taking myself away in my mind was sometimes the only way for me to cope with the pain. Listen, pain happens. Shins get kicked, heads get bumped, bones get broken, and skin gets burned. People curse or sometimes cry. They catch their breath. The bone gets set and the wound heals. Eventually, pain subsides. That’s the simple kind of pain—it may hurt a lot, but it plays fair.
Chronic pain, on the other hand, is unrelenting, unpredictable, and unfair. It can bully with moods, jobs, and relationships, and it affected my ability to be a mom and a wife. But the day I was diagnosed with a connective tissue disease and fibromyalgia, I decided that there’s pain, and then there’s your reaction to pain. That part was up to me, and I was fighting back with everything I had. I wasn’t going to let pain control my life or my family’s.
Some days, the throbbing neck and back pain was all-consuming. After one trip to the emergency room from bad side effects, I tossed all my pain medications into the garbage and started going to a chiropractor. I scheduled weekly massages to help relieve the widespread muscle pain. At times, it felt like a thousand knives piecing my entire body. The weight of a light blanket was so painful that I would sleep uncovered. I walked on an underwater treadmill at physical therapy to remove stress from the painful joints while my muscles strengthened. I cringed when small jolts of electricity shot through my body at the acupuncturist. I forced my husband to sleep with me on a magnetic mattress designed to alleviate pain. I saw a psychologist who warned, “You might never be the old you again; you may get depressed and develop anxiety.” His words only made me that much more determined to beat the pain. People would say, “Just accept it and give into it.” But I couldn’t. If I had accepted my fate, there wouldn’t have been days like today.
By mid-morning, our backyard was full of neighborhood children and enormous inflatable snow tubes, all tangled up together like living, giggling sculptures. We always had a lot of traffic at our house, which I enjoyed. My childhood house was always packed with kids and animals and laughter and love. I adored the chaos—to me, it felt like home. Once the sun began to set, everybody came in for one last round of hot chocolate and delicious treats that I had made. Then they wandered out into the winter wonderland with full bellies and pink cheeks.
“Mom! Sunny needs crickets.” Chris came bouncing down the stairs with his usual reckless abandon that made me think he was about
to go sailing over the railing and land on his head at any moment. It had happened before. Sunny was our Australian bearded dragon who had a seemingly bottomless appetite for crickets and romaine lettuce. Chris had wanted a puppy, but Ward was allergic, so he was making the best of things.
“The lettuce is gone, too. Can we go to Scuffy’s?” Chris grinned mischievously. He knew that I knew that the crickets were just a handy excuse to visit his beloved pet store. Well, this was a family emergency. Venturing out into the snow against the advice of local officials had become unavoidable. So we dug out the family vehicle and headed off to the pet store without giving the swirling Snowmageddon a second thought.
Scuffy’s Pet Store, remarkably, was open, despite the fact that the mall parking lot looked like a frigid steppe straight out of Dr. Zhivago. We parked next to buried SUVs that would clearly not be seeing the light of day until the great thaw arrived. It really was an epic blizzard. What were we thinking coming out into this? But I was not afraid of much of anything those days. And somehow, because of that, we seemed to be able to run where angels feared to tread and get to the other side in one piece.
Julie and Chris rushed into the store, nearly banging headfirst into the manager, Stacey, who was holding an adorable white ball of fluff.
“Chris, this is a Bijon,” Stacey said to my son, who looked skeptical. “He’s a dog your father won’t be allergic to.” Everyone knew that Chris had wanted a puppy almost as bad as I wanted another baby, but I could see that this diminutive dog wasn’t measuring up to the scale of his puppy fantasies.
“That’s not a dog,” Chris muttered, with the royal disdain only a nine-year-old boy can summon. I smiled and petted the puppy apologetically.
“Sorry, little guy. I think Chris has something more like a big chocolate Labrador in mind.” I went about my usual business, ordering forty live crickets in a cup. The things we do for love.
Julie and Chris made their rounds among the cages stocked with puppies, kittens, turtles, and hamsters. Then, they stopped short.
“Mom! Come look!” I shuffled over to oblige them. At that moment, I had not realized that what I would find in the pen at their feet was about to change our lives forever. I looked down.
It was a litter of bunnies. Some were sleeping, curled up together like fuzzy spoons. Others kicked up their hind legs playfully and nibbled on each other’s ears. We all focused in on one bunny who was off on her own. She looked like a miniature version of the Easter Bunny, and her fur was the color of cinnamon sprinkled on snow.
“She’s a dwarf. A red satin,” said Loretta, another employee at the store who was also our Australian bearded dragon expert. She lifted the tiny bunny out of the sweet pool of fur on the floor and handed her to me. Despite the frigid theme of the day, something in me began to melt. She wasn’t much bigger than a softball. She sat looking at us, trembling. Her pink nose twittered, her oversized ears twitched. There was such a sense of mystery emanating from this tiny, warm ball of fur. It was as if I could somehow sense, on a level that is beyond knowing, everything that we would come to mean to each other in the years ahead.
Of course, I paid no further attention to this at the time. All I knew was that she was irresistible and felt wonderful in my arms.
“It’s a kit. That’s what you call a baby bunny,” Loretta explained, winking at me and tickling the bunny’s nose with her finger. “They can make wonderful house pets,” she added slyly.
“She’s so sweet,” I said, stroking the indescribably soft spot behind her ears. Julie and Chris looked at me with the same mournful eyes as the bunny. Apparently, I wasn’t the only pushover in the room.
“We’ll take her!” I blurted out suddenly. To this day, I’m not exactly sure what came over me. The kids’ jaws dropped to the floor.
“Really, Mom?” said Julie, giving me her familiar side-eye. With a daughter who was just entering the eye-rolling, lip-curling brink of adolescence, I had already come to know that look well. “Don’t you think Dad will be mad?”
“He might,” I said, feeling the tickle of a canary feather at the corner of my lips. In the wake of our conversation the night before, I had decided to make this bunny my Waterloo. There was no turning back now.
We let Loretta lead us around the store while we grabbed supplies off of the shelves with reckless abandon, accumulating every known bunny accessory in the industrialized world. The kids were hesitant at first with my unfamiliar burst of bunny rebellion, but they joined in soon enough once we chanced upon the McMansion-sized cage that would be the rabbit’s new home.
I rarely, if ever, did anything on the home front that Ward and I hadn’t discussed and agreed to beforehand, especially when it came to new family members. As a lawyer, Ward believed in due process, and generally I followed it to the letter. Lately though—perhaps because of my conversation with him or my illness, or because my kids were getting older and learning to make their own decisions—it seemed like so much of my life involved negotiation, compromise, concessions, and constant procedural delays about the simplest things that could be avoided.
Today, I just wanted to do something spontaneous. I wanted, for once, to do something just because I wanted to. The moment I set eyes on her, I knew I needed this bunny. And somehow, I also knew, in the way that you do, that the bunny needed me.
We traipsed back out into the snow and headed for home with crickets for Sunny and our humongous cage; enough hay, food, and toys for an entire litter of bunnies; a few books on how to care for rabbits; and, of course, our new bunny. Now I just had to figure out how to tell my husband that he had become the proud new father of an eight-week-old red satin kit—someone who was about to take center stage in our lives and change everything.
Chapter 2
Ward was waiting in the kitchen when we walked in from the garage.
“We just had a little cabin fever and went to the pet store,” I had told him earlier when he called my cell phone, wondering where his family could possibly be during this awful snowstorm. “I’ll be home in five minutes, honey,” I continued happily, as if driving in a blizzard was something any mother would do when her kids got bored. “We have a surprise.”
I dragged the cage in. “She’ll be perfect right here, kids,” I said, pointing to a corner near the closet, as if I had just bought a piece of furniture instead of a pet.
“You bought the kids a rabbit without at least asking me, Nance?”
“I did,” I replied, with haughtiness that surprised even me.
The dead silence was awkward while we both carefully prepared our responses. Five seconds seemed like an eternity. Catching me off guard, Ward skipped what I thought might be a rigorous interrogation and cut to the chase.
“What if I am allergic to her?”
Before he could say another word, Chris came to my rescue and plopped the tiny ball of fur in his father’s arms.
“Look how cute she is, Dad!”
Ward fidgeted awkwardly, trying to make the baby bunny comfortable on his chest. She seemed swallowed up in his large arms. Then, as if the gods were on my side, she made a sharp twist with her body and was suddenly face to face with Ward. Ever so sweetly, she started nibbling on his tie, almost sensing that this big guy was the one she needed to win over.
“She is kinda cute.” Ward rubbed the bunny’s head softly with his knuckles. Discreetly, Chris gave me the thumbs up, and I could feel some of the stress in my shoulders disappear as the bunny’s body began to relax against Ward’s chest. I watched for any signs of a runny nose or hives appearing on Ward’s neck, which happened almost immediately when he was near a cat or dog.
“She’s Julie’s birthday present,” Chris added, winking at Julie. Julie’s birthday was coming up in March, and the kids and I had agreed on the ride home that it was the perfect reason for buying a bunny.
Within minutes, we were all in the family room, watching the little bunny frolic in her new surroundings. Ward sat at his desk, clutching a bottle of
Benadryl and shaking his head periodically in disbelief. The bunny was no bigger than the palm of your hand. Her pure white belly and tail resembled soft balls of cotton. Her features were delicate except for her tall ears, which were disproportionate to her small size. Then, she did the cutest thing. All two pounds of fluff flipped in the air, as though she had springs on her tiny feet, as she twisted her body. This, we later learned, is called binkying or popcorning, which is a bunny’s sign of playfulness and their unique way of communicating, “I am so happy.”
“How big will she get?” Ward asked, cracking a smile. Of course, I knew he was referring to the McMansion-size cage.
“The cage was Chris’s idea,” said Julie helpfully.
While the kids and I sat on the floor, the bunny continued to scamper around the furniture, sniffing everything with her head down like a pig searching for truffles. Julie and Chris squealed delightfully as she hopped around their legs, brushing her fluffy tail up against their feet. When her twittering nose and whiskers tickled my toes, I thought I would burst with excitement. Suddenly, it didn’t seem to matter how painful every muscle in my body felt as I sat cross-legged on the floor. As Julie and Chris smothered their new bunny with kisses, warmth filled my heart as I watched their unbridled affection toward our new family member. I couldn’t remember a happier moment in our family in a long time.