A curly blonde head leaned over the vegetable-patterned fabric, feeding it carefully under the sewing machine foot. The hum of the machine wanting to be let loose, but the girl was too hesitant, having ripped out seam after seam.

I gazed up at my mother for approval on the stitch. I knew it was crooked, but maybe she’d tell me it was good enough. My mother loved to sew. She had two fistfuls of 4-H purple ribbons and several 4-H Minnesota state championships. She gave me a thin smile.

Not quite good enough. I let out a dramatic sigh and reached for the seam ripper.

The screen door snapped shut, and he walked in the house. Grateful for the distraction, I rushed to him, smothering him with a childish hug.

“What’s in the box?” I asked.

She addressed him as “darling” in her letters during their engagement. She blushed when I pointed this out, and took the box of letters saying, I wasn’t old enough to read those letters, yet.

Like any relationship, he did not make it easy. 

Once, a calf was born on a cold, snowy evening, and he brought the wet, shivering calf in the house. The barn wasn’t warm enough he reasoned.

He lowered the box to me. I peered inside, and my heart grew three times bigger. A small brown ball of fluff trembled in the corner. Two long ears, two black eyes and one rapidly twitching nose.

Baby animals have a special power, especially over big tough farmers. Beneath my father’ large frame beat a tender heart; a heart my mother had little willpower to fight.

He had been cutting alfalfa and… he said no more. 

She peered into the box and then looked up at him. Shook her head. Another stray. He was always bringing home strays.

Sometimes it was peasant eggs. Sometimes it was a cat. Always, the wood sewing table was cleared of future 4-H projects, skirts and pants that needed mending and the occasional wall hanging or quilt.

She pulled the brass dome-shaped down to hover above the box. I pushed the lamp aside just a little and leaned over to peer into the box. He hadn’t moved; still twitched that adorable soft nose.

 “Can we keep him,” I blurted out. “We can call him George.”

My father’s hand felt heavy on my shoulder, and somewhere in the space of my wide, puppy dog eyes and my father’s grin, my mother relented again.

I got a welcome break from my crooked stitches.

We named the bunny Bugs, and Bugs thrived beneath that light. All that time no shirts were mended, no loose buttons sewn back on and no 4-H projects proceeded.

I was in heaven.

We hugged Bugs and pet him and rubbed him and caressed him. And sometimes, we took him out of the box, held him to our cubby child cheeks and took a photograph.

As Bugs grew, we placed a window screen on top of his box. The screen was no match for Bugs and his legs. One day, Bugs escaped the box. 

Perhaps taking inspiration from leaving cookies for Santa, she peeled off a fresh leaf of lettuce and left it on the floor. 

The leaf was gone the next morning, and Bugs was back in the box.

He peered into the Bugs’ box and looked at me. I knew the look, knew there was no room for argument and held Bugs against my chest. 

We walked outside, and we found a place in the grove far from the cats and the dogs and the dangers of the world. “Bugs will be fine,” he said.

When we came back into the house, the box and screen were gone. The sewing table now covered with 4-H projects, mending, spools of thread. My mother stood next to the sewing machine with my discarded 4-H project in her hand.

I hung my head, trudged back to the sewing table. A battle weary solider facing an army of thread and fabric and an unforgiving sewing machine. I picked up the discarded fabric from weeks ago and began ripping my stitches.

“Is Dad cutting alfalfa today?”