Nostalgia for Get-Well Soup

I ordered a children’s book the other day. It took some doing but I found a copy of “The Bunnies’ Get Well Soup” by Joan Elizabeth Goodman. It was a story I fondly remembered reading to my children and now that I have grandbabies, I wanted to read it to them.

The story recalls a mother bunny attempting to assemble enough vegetables for a soup for her six bunnies who have the sniffles. The market is closed due to a snowstorm, so she goes to her neighboring animals to borrow items for the soup. She is met in turn by each of the neighbors contributing items, but wanting to come enjoy the soup as well, because they too have chills and sniffles. The mother bunny worries that there won’t be enough for everyone, but in the end each of their contributions makes a hearty kettle of “get well soup.” Finally, they sit by the fire while the icy winds blow outside, drinking homemade root beer and cheering for mother bunny.

Upon re-reading the story now, I am struck with a sense of sadness and loss. When I first read the book to my children in the 1980s, the story rang true – it seemed plausible that friends with colds and chills might come together to have some soup and cheer one another on to good health. Since 2020 though, with the pandemic, the masks, the sanitizer we’ve become a different people. My grandchildren ages one, two, and almost five are being sheltered from contact with others for the most part. Their world right now is about staying safe – and I do understand that, but will they appreciate the simple world described in the story? 

I wonder and don’t have the answers, but I will read the story to them anyway. I will tell them about how I spent time in a hospital’s children’s ward with other sick children and how we made each other laugh. I will tell them tales of scraped knees with kisses to heal, drinking water from the hose, and blowing out birthday candles together, and I will explain friendship with hugs and a world where a bowl of get-well soup with friends cures whatever may ail you. 

Miriam Shanks, 4-13-2021