A personal essay about a porcelain rabbit money box that haunted the author's childhood.
Her house was filled with eccentric knickknacks ranging from wooden stencils, vintage Italian buttons, a vase made of bullet casing shells and rustic shoe-making equipment. As a child, I’d walk around her living room, running my hands over each item and learning the sentimental stories behind their value.But perched on a shelf behind her couch sat my least favourite thing in the entire world – a porcelain rabbit money box.
No one in my family remembers where the rabbit came from, only that it has always been there, and that I have always found it disturbingly creepy.Firstly, it’s ugly. The rabbit possesses a unique kind of hideousness that terrified me as a child and has continued to disturb me well into adulthood. Its white porcelain body is draped in a red scarf, and it clutches a green money sack with a small coin slit. Two sharp buck teeth protrude from its smirking mouth, while its eyes are frozen in an unsettling wink. Which brings me to the second reason I dislike it. Blame undeveloped facial muscles or a weird genetic quirk, but I’ve never been able to wink – a long-running joke in my family. With its permanent wink, the rabbit is a reminder of an embarrassing personal flaw. My nonna loved to laugh. She thought UGG boots were the funniest fashion accessory, and could spend hours laughing at Snapchat filters my little brother showed her. But nothing was more hilarious to her than my inability to wink.Whenever I’d stay with her, she’d move the rabbit from its usual spot on the shelf into my room and place it on the nightstand under the lamp. I’d wake up in the morning, and its freaky one-eyed face would be centimetres from my own. Inevitably, I’d hear her giggles down the hallway, delighted that she had pulled off her prank. Thus began our ritual. I would visit her, immediately locate the rabbit and turn it backwards so I couldn’t see its face. Nonna would then sneak back in and turn its face the other wa
FAMILY RABBIT CHILDHOOD MEMORIES NONNA
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