Andy is a rabbit.

A stuffed rabbit.

A 20 inch tall, stuffed rabbit.

We first met Andy with a few of his brothers and sisters in the Safeway grocery store sometime after Easter in the late 1990s (but before I was married in 1997). My mother, divorced from my father in 1986, was still mourning that marriage, that friendship, and despite an apartment crowded by two of her grown children, was lonely.

We’d go shopping once, sometimes twice a week, and mom adored the stuffed rabbit and would carry him around the grocery store while she shopped. However, she felt he was too expensive, and would always put him back before checking out her groceries.

Jim and I decided that there was no choice but to buy Andy, so we did. As she went through the checkout counter to purchase our groceries, the checker held up Andy and gave him to mom.

Well, mom wept, and Jim and I just smiled smugly.

Andy, just as he is, is a darn cute rabbit. He reminds me a bit of the Fruit Loops rabbit, only with more personality.

Andy wouldn’t have had personality if it weren’t for Jim.

One time, mom and I came home to find Andy hanging from his front paws to the doorknob upstairs. Behind him was a line-up of my stuffed animals – a green dragon, two small teddy bears, a samoyed dog, and a worn out old stuffed dog.

Another time, mom and I watched as a very excited Andy (in Jim’s lap) watched a baseball game.

Once, when Andy had a bath (he had to go into the washer and dryer) mom had seated the now very white and pink rabbit on the couch. Jim came along, wrapped Andy in the towel, with his long arms about himself. Poor Andy, still wet and traumatized from his bath.

On Easter morning about a year later, we woke to find Andy with his hands in the candy bowl and several unwrapped chocolate foils around him. He’d been sharing with the dragon.

My mother had a potter’s wheel in the small dining area that we didn’t use. One time, as she was working on a pot and took a break, she came back to find Andy sitting at the wheel, his paws on either side of the still wet, unformed pot.

So, you see, Andy has a lot of personality. He’s still with mom and she still loves him dearly. He has his own slippers (his girlfriends as they are bunny slippers) and he is currently wearing some Mardi Gras beads that Jim sent to mom around his neck.

My mother asked me to make an Anglican Rosary for Andy, because, you see, Andy is also God.

There is a hymn that goes (that has been thusly interpreted by us):

Andy walks with me, Andy talks with me,
Andy tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.

My mother has asked a few people she knows if they know of someone that could make a black priest’s cassock for Andy, but they just don’t understand what Andy means to my mom.

So, now I come to the internets to ask if there is someone that could do this; for Andy, but for my mother, too.