Dream A Little Dream

The wind was the worst, not the cold nor the dark.  Those were effects without consequence.  For what did a ghost care about the cold when there was no flesh to feel its bite?  And why should a phantom fear the dark, when it disguised a dreadful lack of substance?  But there was something unsettling about the wind reaching through your innards to rustle the bed curtains, treating you as if you weren’t there, which of course, you weren’t.  In death Marley had grown to hate the rustle of dry leaves in the grass and the whisper of new leaves in the treetops.  He would cringe when he saw the breeze lift the curls on a child’s head or push waves along the river.  For a ghost could hear and a ghost could see, but touch escaped with the last breath–the body’s last commerce with wind.  Here in the hall outside his old bedchamber, Marley could hear a draft whistle through the gaps in the door frame, a reminder of all that he had lost.  It had taken  him  a long time to find his way back to this room and his old partner.  Maybe this visit would ease his suffering some, shorten his chain by a link or two. If he’d been among the living, Jacob Marley would have drawn a deep breath before he took the next step; but, the times being what they were, he shrugged his shoulders and stepped through the wall.  Inspired by A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

Outside my window, insanity reigns; the world has gone crazy with springtime.  Birds warble in symphonic abandon as flowering trees trill arias of demented color.  Not to be outdone, the breeze tickles arpeggios on the new leaves, while bumblebees hum sweet, dirty blues in the redbuds.  And the grass…the grass screams GREEN.  But here at my kitchen table I shiver, lost in the company of Dickens’ miser and the ghosts of problems past.  Life has been difficult lately and it has me sore in spirit and mood.  When I get like this, my father, dead these 13 years and often lamented, drops onto a bleacher seat in my psyche and kibitzes from sidelines.  Dad rarely offered advice when he was alive, but since his passing he’s got an opinion about everything.

This should come as no surprise.  After he died, with heartbreaking suddenness, he visited my dreams: once to touch base, once to leave instructions, and once to make me smile.  A less enlightened person might have thought they were losing touch with reality, but I had long been a student of Mr. Dickens and was familiar with “ghostly” visitations.  Dad came back when I needed him the most and it looks like he’s going to stick around a while.

Like all good ghost stories, my father appeared in my dreams on three separate occasions.  The first visit came shortly after he died.  Shock and stress had decimated my immune system and it seemed like I had been sick for weeks.  Then one night as I fitfully dozed, I dreamt I was driving along the familiar gravel road that leads to the family farm.  It must have been midsummer for the sunlight was white and the roadside was dusty.  Close to the mailbox at the end of our lane, my father stood waiting, dressed in his old khaki work clothes.  Stopping the car, I rolled down the window.  Even as an apparition, he had to bend his long frame to see my face.  “Are you okay?” he asked, his voice soft with concern.  “I’m fine, Dad.  I’m going to be fine.”  And I was.

The weeks passed and the difficulty of making farming decisions as a committee of siblings had jangled every familial nerve.  With five sets of feet trying to fill Dad’s shoes, toes were bound to get stepped on.  Elbows were going to get thrown.  Falling asleep one night while nursing my bruises, a dream carried me to the state capitol in Jefferson City, where I stood in the rotunda and gazed up at the dome.  On the third floor leaning over the balustrade was Dad.  “Don’t spend any more money on the farm,” he called.  If only decisions were always that simple.

Dad’s final visit came many months after his death.  My younger son had graduated from the police academy and in my dream, family and friends were leaving a restaurant in a loud and celebratory mood.  As we strolled along saying our goodbyes, a boat of a car, all gleaming fins and shiny chrome, tore into the parking lot.  Accelerating into a perfect donut, the driver spun the behemoth to a screeching stop right at my toes.  Behind the wheel my father grinned with a twenty-something smile I had only seen in old black and white photos.  “You’d better watch out,” I told him.  “Your grandson is a policeman now and you could get in trouble.”  Hearing him laugh was a gift, a tonic.  “First he’ll have to catch me,” he said.

Even after several years, the dreams of my dad are still vivid.  And still a comfort when that father-shaped hole in my heart starts to ache.  But I also use those dreams as existential Post It Notes to remind me of truths about myself that I have, on occasion, misplaced.  Charles Dickens described Scrooge as “secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”  Accumulated hurts from his past had isolated him in his present and shut the door on his future.  It took the ghosts of Christmas to remind him of the man he was when he danced at Mr. Fezziwig’s and made plans for a life with Belle. In the same way, dreaming of my dad made me realize me that I am not the only arbiter of my worth.  In my parents’ eyes, I was a person lovable, capable and deserving of compassion. Now on the bleak days when I look in the mirror and see nothing to care for, I remember the respect my mom and dad had for my judgment and abilities and their sincere desire for my life to go well. And, Dad, if ever I forget that I hope you’ll drop by, my dreams are always open.

Kissing Frogs

Bzzz…slurp!  Gladia’s eyes snapped up from her plate.  Where a moment before a little fly had hovered, there remained only air.  That thing, that green complected freeloader, had actually flicked his tongue out over her candied yams…OVER HER YAMS…and snatched up the fly.  At the end of the royal table, her father clapped and shouted, “Well, done!”  While all of her sisters giggled behind their hands and shot her smug, triumphant glances.  Harpies!  This couldn’t be happening.  She was a princess.  Beautiful, adored…and, yes, a little spoiled…but had she really done anything so wrong?  It was a promise to a frog…a frog, for heaven’s sake.  Surely her father could find some way to make the slimy thing hit the bricks…literally.  Or maybe she could solve the problem on her own.  What could be more gracious than inviting her little guest on an after dinner walk?   A stroll around the castle.  A visit to the stables.  Lots of lovely flies in the stables, dear froggy.  But do mind the horses.  Mustn’t get under their hooves…their big, heavy hooves.  Gladia smiled and tucked her delicate chin to her chest.  With perfect poise, she would endure this first, and hopefully last, dinner with the pushy amphibian.  Now she could afford to be congenial; she had a plan.  Oh dear, the nasty thing just winked at her.  Who does he think he is a handsome prince?  Inspired by “The Frog Prince”.

Plato and a platypus walk into a bar.  When the bartender gave the philosopher a quizzical look, Plato shrugged and said, “What can I say?  She looked better in the cave.” Source: Plato and a Platypus: How to Understand Philosophy through Jokes by Thomas Cathcart & Daniel Klein

OR…”Before you find your handsome prince (or princess), you have to kiss a lot of frogs.”  Popular Wisdom.

Across the course of my life, I have kissed a lot of frogs.  Bull frogs, peepers, toads and hoppers, I’ve kissed them all, always believing that the next gooey smooch might be the one that ends in happily ever after.  What can I say?  I’m nothing if not determined.  But before you assume my long history of amphibian osculation is limited to romantic entanglements, I should explain that I have courted frogs in every area of my life from jobs to education to domiciles.  For each new situation, I don my rose-colored glasses and blind myself to the inconvenience of warty, green reality. Plato would tell me that I was making choices based on shadows rather than truth and he would be right (The Allegory of the Cave).  But where is an ancient Greek philosopher when you need one?  In a world of reality TV and 24/7 advertising, I suspect the old Athenian would throw up his hands and concede the shadows had won.

If you’re like me, you work hard to make the right choices.  But the hours I spend considering the pros and cons, asking advice, and collecting information typically result in me feeling completely overwhelmed and then surrendering to my best guess.  So many of my decisions were not meant to be permanent, but patches to get me over the gaps where my plans had frayed.  Looking back, my life stretches away like an existential crazy quilt of incompatible hues and fabrics, hurriedly basted together against the day when I would come back and put everything right.  Now, I just hope all the stitches hold.   

For the princess and Plato, their decisions were only as good as their best information.  The princess had no clue that the viridian-faced interloper in her life was a handsome prince ready to make all of her dreams come true.  In the joke, it takes the hard light of day for Plato to see the beauty he chatted up in the shadowy cave isn’t all he hoped she would be.  Despite all of the popular advice about how easy it is to turn your world around, to reorganize, to reboot and live a new life free of complications and mistakes, we still can only know what we know, pieces of the big picture will always be hidden.  Though I like to think I’ve kissed my last frog, I can’t be sanguine about my chances.  Every day is full of choices–most of them little ones, thank goodness–but for the big ones, the ones that cause my palms to sweat and my muscles to tense, I’m going to load up on the lip gloss.  After all, to find the hidden prince, we have to take a leap and kiss the frog.   

 

All The Better

Underneath the canopy of leaves, yesterday’s rain plunged to the forest floor–each drop a hesitant jumper seeking annihilation in the moldering undergrowth.  Ruby’s scarlet hood flared against the gray and umber of the ancient oaks.  Her breath burst visible in the chilly air.  Ahead in the clearing waited her grandmother’s house, a thin line of smoke rising from the chimney.  Today, no sunlight stole through the  branches to warm the cottage’s thatched roof.  Today, no birdsong filled her ears with the sounds of joy on the wing.  Today something different rode the mist, not a scent or a feel, but a voice, perhaps, one that whispered to Ruby of nameless worries and half-remembered dreams.  She stepped from the path and up to the door, softly tapping on the age-darkened wood.  From within came a rustle and a clatter.   Then a voice rough with the morning and disuse called out, “Who’s there?”  Ruby lifted the latch and leaned into the room, “Nana Rose, are you okay?  You sound…different?”  (Inspired by the fairytale “Little Red Riding Hood.”)

My father was a destination guy rather than someone who kicked back and enjoyed the journey.  When he traveled, his complete focus was on getting from point A to point B in the least amount of time with the fewest distractions.  Eight hours in the back seat as he silently piloted the family sedan out of the rolling hills of central Missouri on our way to the flat cornfields of southern Iowa seemed torture to two little girls given to boredom and motion sickness.  On the visits to my brothers’ families, I don’t remember ever stopping to read a commemorative plaque or to take pictures of a scenic overview.  Even the tantalizing promises of Hannibal’s  significant past never merited a detour.  Since his job kept him traveling for 49 weeks out of the year, the last place Dad wanted to be when his vacation rolled around was away from the farm and his own bed and his chair at the head of the table.  Everything else was just getting there and getting home.

Dad approached life in the same focused way.  He had been born into a world full of wolves.  Early on World War I, the Spanish flu and the Great Depression had etched his expectations, leaving him no comfort for living in the moment or letting the future take care of itself.  He may have politely listened to the Sunday morning admonitions about the lilies of the field, but in his heart he knew safety and security were not among the gifts of grace.  Even lilies tremble when the wolves begin to howl.  For my parents and their contemporaries, keeping the wolf from the door meant never straying from the path, never stopping to smell the roses.   But as Red Riding Hood learns, monsters can turn up along the most well-trodden paths.  It is the enemy within that so often is our downfall.

The biggest challenge in my life is dealing with the wolf in the mirror.  And there are days when my inner Red Riding Hood has to use all of her hard-won wisdom to keep from being devoured.  When the wolf whispers its disappointment in my apartment, Red remembers that I live in a nice neighborhood and have plenty of room.  When the wolf whines about the state of my bank account, Red revels in knowing all of the bills are paid and my paycheck is steady.  And when the wolf gasps at the latest age spot or gray hair, Red drags me out the door to walk until I remember that, though my packaging may no longer be factory perfect, all of my moving parts still work. 

In the early days of a new year, I always find myself considering how I will make this year different than those that have gone before.  I avoid hard and fast resolutions, but choose instead to embrace fuzzier aspirations such as “laughing more” and “worrying less”.  In particular, I like to imagine that somehow Red and I will tame the wolf or at least relocate it to a spot deeper in the forest where its howls will keep me mindful but not anxious.  As frightening as it can be, I need the wolf’s focused and slightly glowering presence as much as I need Red’s joie de vivre–for the wolf will get me to my destination, but the girl in the red hood will remind me to appreciate the distractions along the way.  

 

I Need A Hero

"Gracie" original artwork by Ann Kruse

The young man watched as the gravediggers slowly lowered the plain wooden box into the damp earth.  His two brothers stood with their heads together having forgotten their late father, their younger brother and the solemn occasion that had them shivering in the rain.  Marcus, the oldest, looked confident and smug.  His next meal was already simmering in the large kitchen under the millhouse.  Titus, the middle brother, earnestly whispered into his elder sibling’s ear.  The two young men were marrying their assets–the mill and the mule.  But where did that leave Quintus, the youngest son and the heir to the family cat–a scrawny thing that Quint could see peeking from a pile of leaves near his mother’s weathered gravestone.  As he eyed the cat he thought, “that bag of bones won’t even make one decent meal.  His fur won’t be enough for a pair of mittens.  How shall I ever survive?”  (Inspired by the story “Puss in Boots” by Charles Perrault.)

One winter morning when I was old enough to know better, I crawled out of bed, packed up my car and ran away from home.  Or to be more precise, home had run away from me and I was just surrendering the field.  My sons had grown, my husband had decamped and my parents had succumb to age and illness.  My only companions in the old white house were the family cat and the silence as large and worrisome as a hibernating bear.  At this point in the story, I wish I could say I joined the circus or moved to Florence, but instead I took the same road that dispossessed women have been traveling for centuries…I got myself to a nunnery.  Or the closest Protestant equivalent–I enrolled in seminary.  Now almost seven years later, I look at the experience and wonder.  Had I joined the circus, today I might have a bitchin’ tattoo and the ability to walk the highwire.  Had I moved to Florence, my Italian would be perfect and my artwork would be suffused with the light only found under a Mediterranean sun.  What I carried away from seminary is much harder to identify and almost impossible to articulate.

Running away when life grows too much to bear is an act so human it has become cliché.  When life gets tough, the not-so-tough hit the road. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty closed their eyes on a world beyond their capacity to cope.  Dorothy flew off to Oz and Jonah jumped on the first boat headed out of town.  When faced with hardship, the youngest son in “Puss in Boots” threw up his hands and let his cat accomplish what he was too timid to even try.  But willing and able heroes arrive armed with double-edged swords.  Though the miller’s cat delivered wealth, a castle and a bride, the young man’s desires for his future are never considered.   With his confidence battered and the thought of what comes next more than he could face, the youngest son let a cat decide his fate. 

Rescue seems like a blessing when we are hurt and lost.  And we are never more hopeful for a knight in shining armor, or a cat in leather boots, than when we are facing difficult choices.  But ceding our right to choose often leaves us resentful and our hero becomes our scapegoat.  When I settled into my tiny apartment at seminary, I was hoping I had found a safe space, where people wiser than myself would fix all my broken pieces.  It turns out I only got half of what I was hoping for, but I’m starting to believe I got the best half.  Sometimes, a place apart  is all we need to be able to find the hero hidden within.  In that safe, still place, the part of us that needs to heal can heal and the part that is as valiant and resourceful as the miller’s cat can start to plan for the future.

 (Disclaimer:  First, let me say that seminary and tattoos are not mutually exclusive.  I know plenty of ministers, seminarians and theologians who sport some pretty righteous body art.  And second, not once…even when life was at its bleakest…did I ever consider throwing the family cat into the stew pot.)

What The Child Saw

Only a moment before, the Emperor had felt the silken robe, light as a spider’s touch, slide against his skin.  He had heard its rustle as he raised his hand to wave to the oddly quiet crowd.  Even now he hesitated, carefully placing each step to avoid tearing the magnificent scarf that hung from his waist.  But he couldn’t ignore the whispers.  “A child says he has nothing on.”  “It’s true.  Can’t you see?  He has nothing on.”    Was everyone in his empire too dull to see the marvelous garments the weavers had created just for him?  But as the breeze sent chills up his spine and the gooseflesh pimpled his arms, he knew.  His fine clothes were just a fantasy.   He fought the urge to drop his hands over his most delicate parts, straightened his shoulders and avoided looking at his gawking subjects.  He would tough this out.  Keep living the illusion.  But let him hear so much as one snicker, one giggle and heads would roll.  (Inspired by “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen.)

Being photographed is one of my least favorite things.  There is something about the stark reality of a picture of yourself that strips away any pretensions.  By never asking questions like, “does this skirt make me look fat” or “how do you like my hair,” I remain in comfortable ignorance of what I look like in the eyes of others.  That is until someone brings out a camera and starts taking pictures.   Photos of me all the way from grade school until now show the strained smile and tightness around the eyes of someone who is about to get bad news.  You can always tell your most passive aggressive of friends by who’s the quickest to assure you the photograph you hate the most “looks just like you.”  And in the age of social media, the pictures you always hoped would spend their existence forgotten in a box at the bottom of a closet are now on Facebook for all the world to see.  Ah, progress.

Cameras are everywhere.  At a recent wedding as one friend danced in blissful abandon another friend caught every funky moment on her smart phone.  We live in a time where we always have to be ready for our next close up.  Our hair, our skin, our teeth, everything has to be perfect.  Though I try to fight it, there is a little voice in my head telling me that once I attain perfection, I will finally have peace of mind.  When all the chores on my lifetime to-do list are checked off, when I’ve found the right haircut, the right job, the right relationship, I will be able to stop worrying and just live.  Like the Emperor, I’m searching outside for something that will make me happy inside.  By living outside in, instead of inside out, we endeavor to make the world happy with us and miss the opportunity to be happy with ourselves.

Last night, I watched the movie Annie Hall again for the umpteenth time.  One of my favorite scenes comes early in the film when Alvy’s grade school classmates stand beside their desks and reveal the adults they’ll eventually become.  I always laugh the loudest at the little girl with narrow glasses who dispassionately states, “I’m into leather.”  Telescoping the years from the time a child is relatively untouched by life’s illusions to a confession of adult proportions is comic genius, but it also makes me long for the unselfconscious days of childhood.  In the story, it took the open heart and mind of a child to say what everyone else had to be thinking.  When my younger son was very small, he came to me one day and, gazing at me nose-to-nose, he said, “Mom, what does the world look like through grown up eyes?”  If I had been wise that day, I would have said, “First, you tell me what it looks like to you.”

Straw Into Gold

Alone in the forest, Rum lit a fire.  The flame pushed back the darkness and cast dancing shadows beneath the trees.  Rum loved the night.  The darker the better.  Overhead an owl hooted a forlorn invitation, a sound that tugged at Rum’s own loneliness.  But remembering his plan and the desperation of the queen, he brightened.  By the time the sun set on one more day, he would have a companion.  Someone to listen to his stories and drive away the melancholy.  It made Rum want to sing.  “What’s the harm,” he said to the night.  “There’s no one here but me, Rumpelstiltskin.”  At the sound of Rum’s voice, something skittered away in the leaves.  Rum held his breath and listened.  Perhaps, he wasn’t alone.  “You’re being foolish,” he said.  “It’s just a mouse.  Watch out, Mousie!  Old Man Owl’s hungry for a bedtime snack.”  He laughed and hooted as he danced around the fire.  Then he begin to sing.  Rum had set all of his secrets to music.  Tomorrow night, if his new guest was very good, he would sing to him.  Success was so close, he could almost smell the baby powder.  (Variation on the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin”)

My downstairs neighbor likes onions.  I know this because, at the oddest times, their pungent smell billows from my vents and saturates the air in my apartment.   Candles and air freshener barely tame the potency as each new cycle of the furnace or AC adds a fresh blast of oniony perfume.  The worst occurs when she cooks late in the evening and the aroma of Allium cepa blankets the air in my bedroom.  It’s offensive and upsetting and it reminds me that the life I’m living isn’t much like the life I want.  It’s times like these that I have to remind myself of Rumpelstiltskin and the danger of disappointment.

The story of the miller’s daughter and the strange little man who spins straw into gold is a tale about wanting.  The miller wants the favor of the king.  The king wants massive amounts of gold.  The maiden wants to survive.  And the little man really just wants someone to keep him company.  Fueled by horror movies and macabre fireside stories, I used to believe Rumpelstiltskin wanted the baby as the main course for his evening meal.  But in Germany where the Grimm brothers collected this tale, imps were portrayed as lonely creatures who craved human attention.  Knowing this, Rumpelstiltskin’s motives lost their evil overtones and I begin to have a little compassion for the short-sighted creature.  Of all the characters in the story, he is the only one willing to help the others reach their desires, but his assistance comes at a price.  In the end, it is Rumpelstiltskin who is left disappointed and in his disappointment he self-destructs.  

Of all of the fairy tales I’ve read across the course of my life, this one tweaks at my conscience in a very real way.  I’m sure I’ve played all of these characters, shifting from miller to king to maiden to imp, as I’ve single-mindedly gone after my own desires while ignoring the needs of others.   Day after day, the drama of dueling agendas plays itself out at our jobs, in our friendships and in our families, and like it or not, someone always walks away empty-handed and hurt.  We all take our turns at being Rumpelstiltskin.   As Mark Nepo says, “Sometimes we can’t get what we want.  While this can be disappointing and painful, it is only devastating if we stop there.”

With each disappointment comes an opportunity and a decision.  We can choose to stop where we are–one leg buried in the ground up to our thigh and our hands around the other pulling with all our might.  Or we can find a way to move forward.  I imagine that Rumplestiltskin’s story could have ended much differently.  Reaching out to the queen as a friend, and heavens knows she needed one, might have turned this story into one that ended happily ever after.  Or as Mick Jagger eloquently puts it, “you can’t always get what you want…but if you try sometimes, you find, you get what you need.”

The Second Day

Kansas prairie, the second day. She opened her eyes on a room with buckled floorboards.  Her bed canted slightly to the left.  But even before the first hint of dawn crept through the broken window, before the rooster crowed from the top of the fence post, Dorothy knew she was truly and safely home.  There had been a moment at bedtime, after Aunt Em had kissed her goodnight and she had pulled the quilt up to her chin, when she hesitated before settling down to sleep.  Was it fear or anticipation that kept her eyes wide open and staring into the shadowy corners of her room?  Was there a chance she would awaken, not in the farmhouse on the flat Kansas prairie, but back among the lush green hills and gnarled apple trees of Oz?  For Dorothy, the adventure beyond the rainbow had changed her.  She had defied a witch and earned the respect of a wizard.  She had negotiated the dangers and beauties of an alien landscape and returned home with a deeper understanding of herself and her world.  For Dorothy Gale life would never be the same.  (Inspired by MGM movie version of the The Wizard of Oz.)

Twisters sweep through everyone’s lives.  Only a lucky few will never have to face the whirlwind.  Having experienced life among the rubble, I’m familiar with the stages of grief and the development of coping skills.  Recently it struck me that if you look at The Wizard of Oz from just the right perspective you find a fitting guidebook to the healing process, especially to the people you’ll meet along the way.  The devastation and disorientation that comes after a personal loss send us outside of the familiar and leave us struggling to find our way back home.  Like Dorothy, we wander, “a stranger in a strange land” (Exodus 2:22, KJV) .  If we’re lucky, we will have companions on the journey to comfort and protect us.  If we’re wise, we will let the long road back teach us the lessons we need to learn.  Returning to what is left of our daily lives after surviving Oz, we have to assimilate the twister experience into everything that comes after.

When the wind dies down and the debris settles back to earth–when we are left standing alone with nothing but what we can hold in our arms, our first instinct is to look for a friendly face, a comforter, a guide.  In the MGM movie, Dorothy’s first guide was Glinda, the good witch who appears right after the twister drops the farmhouse in Oz.  Dorothy must have hoped Glinda was the cavalry riding to the rescue in a golden bubble.  My own Glinda didn’t travel in a bubble or even balance her hat upon her nose, as the Witch of the North did in Baum’s book.  In fact my Glinda was a guy, but even without the magic wand, he seemed heaven-sent.   Here was someone who would know all the answers; who would tell me how to make everything right.  But over time I learned that Glindas don’t possess any special magic.  There are no free bubble rides here.  Unlike Cinderella’s fairy godmother, whose assistance is an act of grace, Glinda makes you work for your salvation.  With hints and serene smiles, she (or he) suggests there might be dangers on the road ahead and gives you shoes inappropriate to the walk.  Glindas mean well and they can be charming, but avoid expecting too much from them. 

As Dorothy meets the Scarecrow, the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion, she gathers the perfect escort for a road trip to the Emerald City.  These guys didn’t have many practical skills and they had no means to send the little girl home to Aunt Em, but in loyalty and humor they were unmatched.  When the way is rough, the best kind of friends are those who offer you wisdom without imposing their vision; who listen to your pain without making judgments; and who brave your anger even when they know its misplaced.  These are the people who keep us moving forward step by hesitant step.  And every wanderer should have a Toto, ready to defend us at the first whiff of sulfur, while loving us unconditionally every step of the way.  When we are locked in a tower composed of our own grief and fear, these are the friends who will outwit the guards and storm the castle. 

Finally, the most dangerous encounter along the journey is not the Flying Monkeys or even the Wicked Witch.  The greatest threat to our safe return home is a wizard with big ideas.  Wizards are never what they seem.  These purveyors of flim flam tend to take on the mantle of a higher authority, grabbing sure-fire solutions to our problems from a grab bag of half-baked ideas.  Unlike Glinda, a wizard will be eager to sell us an itinerary that suits their designs rather than our needs.  My advice when dealing with wizards is to look behind the curtain.  What you may find is a very good person, but a very bad friend.    

My hope is that you never have to spend time beyond the rainbow—that the storms in your life never grow larger than a prairie dust devil.  But if the whirlwind comes, pick your companions well and give yourself time.  To paraphrase another familiar hero at the end of his “Oz” experience, “what I had only heard about, now I have seen” (Job 42:5).  Job survived his cyclone with a new understanding.  It is not consolation for what we have lost, but a sense of peace for moving ahead.

It’s Just A Flesh Wound

And it happened one day that King Arthur came upon a battle between the Black Knight, guardian of a quite ordinary stream, and the Green Knight, an interloper determined to cross the stream or die trying…which he did.  Arthur, who passed by just as the Black Knight skewered the Green through his helmet, immediately offered a seat at the Round Table to the victor. 

A scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, 1975.

Not to be diverted from protecting the plank over the rivulet, the Black Knight ignored Arthur’s offer and raised his sword to prevent the new challenger from crossing the piece of wood.  Combat between the warriors was valiant and bloody, but in a matter of moments the Black Knight had lost both arms and both legs.  Reduced to an angry ranting torso on the turf, the Black Knight demanded Arthur continue the battle, insisting, “It’s just a flesh wound.”  Monty Python and the Holy Grail, 1975

I’ve always considered myself reasonably smart.  Not genius material, but smart enough to know when to come in out of the rain or when to cross the street.  In the Black Knight’s place, I think I would have been clever enough after losing one arm to call it a day and cede passage to Arthur and his companions.  Unfortunately, I might not have recognized the wisdom of accepting Arthur’s initial offer and riding off to Camelot with all my limbs intact.  That’s the drawback to having one approach to problem solving, you might be so focused on your predicament you miss an opportunity.  Sometimes all it takes is a slight course adjustment to make the difference between heartbreak and happiness. 

My preferred tactic for dealing with problems is to ignore them.  Over the years I’ve learned that most will sort themselves out given enough time.  But there are those uncomfortable occasions when a dilemma demands attention and that’s when I fall back on the same course of action the Black Knight pursued with such determination.  Planting my feet and facing the problem head on is perfect for some situations.  And I’ve defeated a few Green Knights that way.  But when the path ahead isn’t clear or my needs are in conflict with another’s, the head on approach can be self-defeating. 

In recent months I’ve donned my ebony armor and gone into battle against a couple of obstacles I could no longer ignore—a scary dog and writer’s block.  The dog, like a latter day Cerberus, is an angry mutt with a mission, who stands guard at his owner’s front door along a route I regularly walk.  The sight and sound of him tensed and 

Cerberus by William Blake

barking  at the end of his chain prickles the skin at the back of my neck.  But in knightly fashion, I don’t give ground when I pass his way.  For reasons I can’t explain, I am determined to walk along the sidewalk that borders his yard, even though there is a perfectly good walkway on the other side of the street.  For this the dog and I both suffer.

The head on approach hasn’t fared any better in its battle against my thwarted creativity.  I read somewhere that Jane Yolen claims writer’s block is all in your head.  And I can’t argue with her logic.  But it seems like such a tame and frivolous thing if it’s only in my head, curable by a good night’s sleep or one well-turned phrase.  Like many of life’s obstacles, not writing started out as a small annoyance, a pebble in my shoe.  But over time the pebble grew to a stone and then a boulder.  Until finally it felt like the best parts of me had turned to granite—a monolith that wouldn’t give way, despite determination and self-discipline.  For all the days I spent in headlong combat against writer’s block, I couldn’t even scratch its stony surface.  What finally made the difference was when I laid down my lance and picked up a feather. 

Love as a force of change abounds in fairytales and it was love that finally won the day for me.  A few weeks ago I fell head over heels for the touch screen and apps of a tablet computer.  Though I had to convince the “mom” voice in my head that there were several practical reasons why I needed this gadget, I really bought it for fun.  And it has not disappointed.  More importantly, added to the joy of instant and portable e-gratification is the delight I rediscovered in writing.  Tablets are not suited to heavy writing, so I use it to type up quick notes and random ideas.  Such ephemeral scribbling doesn’t need to be well written or sensible.  It can be full of whimsy or just plain bad.  But soon what I’d written was finding its way to my laptop and I was fine-tuning phrases and completing whole paragraphs.  And I was having fun.  This featherweight device didn’t fix my writer’s block, but it shifted my perspective just enough that I found the crack in the stone and was able to break it up and sweep it away.                  

The Black Knight missed his chance to join Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, because he couldn’t adapt, even after losing his ability to hold a lance or stand his ground.  I couldn’t defeat my writer’s block, because I had lost sight of the joy that made me want to write in the first place.  That sense of joy has trickled into other areas of my life.  Recently while walking, I encountered “the dog”.  He started barking as soon as I breached his territory and strained at his chain trying to close the distance between us.  But that day, “the better part of valor was discretion” and I crossed to the opposite side of the street and, hopefully, to a greater sense of comfort for us both.  Had I done anything else I would have earned Arthur’s parting assessment of the beleaguered Black Knight, “You’re a looney.”

Witches

Saturday morning.  Five o’clock.  Outside thunder rolls through the valley where I live and lightening flickers beyond the draped windows.  A morning meant for staying in bed and letting the weather have its way with the world, but how can I sleep when the storm has filled my thoughts with witches–hags of the Halloween variety; evil queens of the Disney sort; and the witches of Oz, both good and bad.  The climatic light show this morning seems especially suited to the royally wicked stepmother of Snow White.  In Disney’s 1937 animated movie, crashing thunder and flashing lightening power her violent transformation from sorceress to hag.  Later, the raging storm returns to stage-craft her dramatic demise at the end.  The weather was not this woman’s friend.

Time was her enemy as well.  Though unnamed and invisible, time plays no less a part in this story than the huntsman or the prince.  It is time the queen wants to control when she plots to eliminate the competition. How ironic that to accomplish the death of Snow White, she transforms herself into the one thing she is desperately trying to avoid becoming–an old woman.  Reaching into her own past and out of Snow White’s future, the queen takes on the form of a crone and offers the poisoned apple to the princess.  You can almost hear her thinking as the girl bites into the sweet but deadly fruit, I once looked like you.  Live long enough and one day you will look like me.

Can it really be her status of unequaled beauty the stepmother is trying to protect or is it the power that comes with beauty?  Witches are only sometimes about looks, but they are always about power.  A witch may be gorgeous like Glinda.  Or she may have green skin and warts, but what they all have in common is power–over the elements; over their minions; and, most frightening of all, over us.  MGM’s Wicked Witch of the West was unlovely and unloved, but she reveled in the fear she saw on the face of her victims.  No magic mirrors hung on the walls of her castle, but soldiers and winged monkeys waited on her every command.  On the death of her sister, the Witch of the West was all about consolidating power and annexing Munchkinland. 

Macbeth and Banquo encounter three witches.

So what draws us to these practitioners of all things magical?  Why have they haunted literature and the arts since ancient times? Witches and wizards still abound in our movies, television and books.  When we feel helpless, the power of witchcraft appeals to us most.  Being able to solve our problems with the flick of a wand or the twitch of a nose is an enviable skill, until we remember that witches quite often come to a bad end.  The evil queen and the Wicked Witch of the West were both unseated by apparently powerless girls.  But girls with time on their side.  Snow White and Dorothy survive the loss of their familiar lives by facing their futures one moment at a time, one step at a time, until they wake up to new beginnings.  At the end of their respective stories, the princess and the girl from Kansas look on their familiar landscapes with new perspectives.  They are now survivors and survival confers a special kind of power.  Once you have faced a night in the forest, whatever the day brings is never quite so scary again.

A Kiss On The Cheek

The story I am about to tell you is absolutely true. 

One foggy, September morning a small group of six-year-olds huddled in the entry-way of a crumbling three-story building.  Brown eyes stared into blue.  Hands clutched large pencils and writing pads. Tears threatened.  Until this morning, many of the children had never been in a group of others their own age.  To them, first grade was so alien to everything they had previously encountered the parents might well have dropped them on Mars or abandoned them in the middle of a dark and frightening wood.  

Original photograph by Liliane Callegari

 

In this particular corner of the forest, a beautiful queen held sway.  She had dark hair, shiny red fingernails and glasses that gave her eyes a feline tilt.  She ruled with two faces—one for parents and one for her class.  One face always smiled and the other…well, the other didn’t.  She was a queen well-suited to her reign.  Fear was her broadsword.  Humiliation was her dagger.  She could sense weakness from across the room and, in the blink of an eye, would race down a row of desks to lift an offending first grader out of her chair, digging those bright red nails into the tender place behind a little ear.  The children thought she knew their bad thoughts even before they thought them. 

As the days passed the children became very well behaved, but they stayed patient, waiting for a chance to escape.  Sometimes when the queen would lock them in the classroom while she went across town for lunch, the children would boost one of their number over the radiator and out the window.  Once outside, the child would run to unlock the door and free the first graders.  Into the sunshine they would dash and drink in the fresh air like it was nectar, but they were always careful to lock themselves back in the room before the queen returned.  When spring came and the trees and bushes burst with leaves, the children would hide beneath the hedgerow at the edge of the playground and create worlds without rules or rulers, until the day they missed the recess bell and the queen had the hedgerow cut down.  

By May, the children were wise in the ways of survival.  They had learned many things, not to cry when the queen made you stand alone before the class, not to listen when one of your friends was locked in the closet, and not to tell your parents.  For the parents had only seen the queen’s smile as she claimed a kiss from each child at the end of every day.  The years ahead would bring new kings and queens in different realms, but the memory of kissing that powdered cheek would never go away. 

On the list of names for the 1958 first grade class at my rural Missouri school, you won’t find Hansel and Gretel, but they were there.  The little boy scratching at the supply closet door begging to be released and the spunky girl climbing over the window sill and racing to free her classmates might well have stepped off the pages of a Grimm brothers’ tale.  Did we think in those terms at the time?  I’m sure we didn’t.  But I can’t help but think that on some level the insanity of our first grade year was survivable, because our parents and grandparents had told us the old tales.  Joseph Campbell believed the old familiar stories provided a sense of perspective for our lives and the tale of the two children who manage to outwit the old woman seems tailor made for those times when your wits and patience are the only advantages you have.