When Make-Believe Goes Awry

"Dear Easter Bunny (Garrett Demko Michael), I want to go to your house and live there. I love you. Garrett told me all about you. Drew"

Garrett and Drew are good pretenders. They are daily making up new games (or replaying new versions of old ones), and to this point they have been on the same wave-length as they have built and outfit rocket ships for travel to Uncle John's house or the North Pole...

I don't know how it began, but yesterday Drew and Garrett started talking about the Easter Bunny and going to visit him. Drew wanted to write a note telling the Easter Bunny that he wanted to go to his house and live there, and Garrett started creating this story about how he had been to the Easter Bunny's house this past Easter. It was so very cute, how excited and earnest they were about it all; Drew quizing Garrett about what he did and all the details of the Easter Bunny's house, Garrett talking with authority about the whole experience. Things reached their most adorable after dinner when Garrett said the Easter Bunny was on his way and there was much squealing and jumping and clapping of hands. And to cries of "I hear him coming!", they ran outside to see...

And, as it's been said... "Sometimes, at the height of our revelries, when our joy is at it's zenith, when all is most right with the world..." Turns out the Easter Bunny was not, in fact, on his way up our driveway. Which Garrett knew all along, as he was pretending. Drew, on the other hand, was heartbroken. For the first time, that I know of, they were not on the same page... In the murky four-year-old world of reality and make-believe, they had missed each other and headed down different paths. While Drew's heart broke at the disappointment of no visit from the Easter Bunny, mine broke at his vulnerability (while also laughing - inside - at the ridiculousness of the situation). It was one of many, I'm sure, moments of pure sweetness and heartbreak, holding this crying boy who didn't understand why the Easter Bunny was not arriving at our house the way his brother assured him he would be.