On the ability to see rabbits: stories involving a girl, her grandmothers, and aging vision

Abstract

In this essay, I explore a child’s experience of engaging with animals, and through animals, humans in her life. For children and adults alike, most of life happens in mundane moments. Yet, bumped along through time and mundane everydayness, we are periodically struck by something. This is a story about a child’s experience of out-of-the-ordinariness, of being struck, being struck by and seeing, really seeing rabbits.

Keywords:

• animal studies
• experimental writing
• child experience

Acknowledgements

I am very grateful to Jacob Segal and Lore Segal for all of their help with this essay. And of course, I am very grateful to all the rabbits I have encountered, for being there and being rabbits. I dedicate this essay with much love to my grandmother, Kathleen O’Malley Allen.