The Weather Inside

Beware the cold, you, warm-blooded creature! Protect those delicate fingers! Defend those vulnerable toes! For I will pinch them till they are blue. I will breathe my icy breath across your skin until your blood retreats deep beneath the surface. From safe inside your walls, you watch while I encase your window panes in frosty lace and you think me fragile, but at my touch the world stops and whole civilizations stand still. You know the dangers of my kiss, yet my beauty draws you out of the warmth and into my frigid world. Abide with me and soon you will not feel the cold. Soon you will gladly sleep at my feet, forgetting the fire, forsaking the sun, surrendering to the winter that never ends. Inspired by The Snow Queen by Hans Christian Andersen.  

Winter depresses me. The gray skies, the cold, the stress of snowbound and icy roads all contribute to a discontent that goes bone-marrow deep. I start to pine for spring almost as soon as the last autumn leaf has fallen and I cling to each milestone that marks our progress toward longer, sunnier days. December’s solstice, the beginning of March, these are the holidays I celebrate each winter, lighting a candle in the darkness of my soul and reminding my battered spirit that seasons soon change. My mother coped with the gray and cold by paging through her gardening catalogs and reminding us of how the sun would feel on our skin and how the flowers would bloom in colorful riot. Not a gardener myself, I consult with the calendar and claim each extra minute of daylight as a down payment on the promise of brighter times ahead.

Hans Christian Andersen knew a thing or two about this coldest of seasons.  In wintertime, Denmark “is ruled by snow, ice and icy winds…and for months the days are dark and short.” So it’s not surprising that in many of Andersen’s tales, the cold plays a pivotal role. Winter as portrayed in The Snow Queen is beautiful, yet ruthless. If you’ve never read this bizarre and winding tale, you might be surprised to find it is nothing like Disney’s Frozen. In Andersen’s story, there are no sisters, no trolls, no talking snowman and no catchy tunes about letting go. The only features the stories share are plucky heroines, reindeer and lots and lots of ice and snow. The Snow Queen can be read as a coming-of-age story, but to me it is also a metaphor for depression.

Andersen, who also knew something about depression, told his tale in seven parts. Most of the action, in stories two through seven, follows the little girl, Gerda, in her search to rescue her friend, Kay, who has been taken by the queen. The first story, however, relates a fable about a demon-made mirror that reflects every beautiful person or thing as ugly and everything ugly looks even worse.  As goblins are flying the mirror to heaven to torment the angels, it shatters sending shards floating through the air. These lodge in the hearts and eyes of unfortunate and unsuspecting souls, causing them to see the world as a bleak and unsightly place. Two splinters find their way to Kay where one settles in his eye and the other in his heart and in this sad and disaffected state, Kay wanders away from home and is carried off to the Snow Queen’s palace of ice.

Reading this fairytale in the midst of the winter doldrums seemed fitting, because it is during this time of year that I am most vulnerable to depression. As the cold days drag on, I find myself discontented. Suddenly, the people I love don’t love me enough in return. My work feels pointless. My interests seem foolish. I struggle to smile or to care and the physical weight of carrying around all of this dissatisfaction makes me almost too tired to get out of bed. But these feelings aren’t new to me and I have learned to recognize when I need to pay extra attention to how I’m feeling and, more importantly, I have learned to know when I need to ask for help.

In the tale, even after months have passed and his family has given him up for dead, Gerda will not accept that Kay is lost. She sets out alone to find him on a journey that will test her strength and her good heart. Before she reaches the palace of the Snow Queen, she will need to make sacrifices and seek help. More than once on her long, strange trip, she loses her shoes and must forge ahead through the snow in her little bare feet.  But Gerda is steadfast and when she finally finds Kay her tears melt the mirror in his heart. And when Kay sees Gerda, his tears wash the sliver from his eye. Upon returning to their homes, Gerda and Kay realize that big changes have happened while they were away, for now they are all grown up and it is summer.

It is helpful for me to imagine depression as the Snow Queen, who waits to take advantage of those times when I am most vulnerable and who freezes my heart and robs me of my will. I recognize that, just as the mirror distorted Kay’s perceptions, depression makes it harder for me to see clearly and I tend to lose sight of what’s important.  But I also take comfort in knowing that I can claim  the traits of Gerda and by emulating her strength and wisdom, I can melt the ice and find my way back home, even if it takes a little help.

In the last few days here in St. Louis, the sun has reappeared and the snow has melted. The temperatures and the birds are proclaiming that spring can’t be far away and I think I’m safe in saying I’ve survived another winter. But even with spring, depression never is completely gone from my life. No one person’s experience of depression is like another’s, but I hope that if you’ve had to confront the Black Dog, this reflection has proven helpful. Happy Almost-Spring and remember to be good to yourself and never be afraid to ask for help.

Mirror, Mirror

The Mirror speaks—How could I not love this face?  Changeable as it is, aged as it has become, I still find beauty in the shifts and quirks of the emotions that ripple across its surface. Hers is the face that fills my world and, in those moments when she rages against the erosion of years on her skin, I hold each wrinkle and spot as sacred signs of a life well-lived. I love this face as if it were my own, for in truth, it is. And it is truth that I reflect, but what I offer as a gift and testament to all she is, she receives as an admonition and cries out against the unfairness of a verdict that she cannot appeal. Time plays havoc with us all. Even my smooth and silvered surface, laid down in perfection all those decades ago, has pocked and peeled leaving coppery islands and inky streams. If I could speak to her beyond those words the enchantment allows, I would share my admiration and remind her that the face she sees is the face she has earned.  Inspired by Little Snow White by the Brothers Grimm.

“I’m done.” In the mirror our eyes locked in reflected gazes; mine resolute, hers quizzical and maybe a touch concerned. “I’m just done.”

Decisions are never easy for me. I had flirted with this one for months and though my angst might seem like the fretting of a woman loath to release her hold on something that, in reality, had slipped from her grasp long ago; the truth of the matter is I am lost in that no-person’s land of an aging woman in a youth-centric culture. The familiar signposts and landmarks that guided me through my younger years no longer seem relevant and the map I’ve chosen to follow doesn’t match the cultural landscape.

Perhaps my children should worry. If I decide to go gray in a world that insists I need to look as young as I can for as long as I can, what does my decision say about me? Is this the first plodding step along the slippery slope to the valley of despair. After the golden highlights have faded and the low lights are no more, will I tumble into despondency and cease to bathe? Or could this hard earned decision be a declaration—a shot across the bow of a social standard that denies the beauty of anyone who has passed their middle years? In my heart, to Deny the Dye has become my manifesto.

My hairdresser was not happy. My visits, which used to be characterized by long comfortable chats and shared intimations, became strained. Now we came together as strangers, instead of acquaintances of many years. I suspect the chill behind her forced smile said as much about her own approaching dye or not to dye moment as the impact of my decision on her bottom line. In her eyes glinted the fear of time and the relentless passing of days. In my naiveté I had hoped she would guide me along a gracefully graying path, but her terse denial, “there is no way to go gray gracefully” turned out to be a personal rejection as well as a professional philosophy. Today I am glad to say, she was wrong.

So far the changes have been subtle. My scalp has become a loom weaving silver and platinum threads among the browns of my birthright. And you may think me mad, but I love it. I find myself rejoicing in my new, natural roots. There is something primal about the brindle colors of salt and pepper and cinnamon. My hair is no longer a coif, but a mane. No longer something to be lacquered into submission, but a creature to release into its natural state. With a growing understanding that encompasses more than my tresses, I realize I’ve spent my life chained to someone else’s idea of what I should look like. For me, it’s time to break those chains.

By the end of my marriage, I had learn to approach the mirror with trepidation.  Like the queen in Snow White, I cringed at my reflection and lashed out at the damage done by time and circumstance. I hated my face and its features and I started searching for ways to recapture the person I was before the destructive years took their toll. Somewhere, I believed, there had to be a spell or a potion, a dye or a cream, that would return me to me. But the victories were few and fleeting and my hair still grew gray and my jawline still sagged. Finally, one morning as I listed the faults revealed in my reflection, I literally said, Stop.  And I asked myself this question, if this face belonged to a stranger, what would I think? Would I be repulsed?  Would I see the lines and wrinkles as excuses to turn away? To be angry? To believe this face wasn’t worthy of my compassion? Or would I see a face who has survived and still smiles; who has suffered and still goes on? Would the kind eyes and laugh lines mark this countenance as someone I would offer a grin and a nod of my head?  In asking those questions, I found my face was worthy and fine and even beautiful in its way.  In forgetting myself, I was able to find my-self in the mirror once again.

Women and, with increasing frequency, men step up to the looking glass with an eagle eye for the flaws and faults. Our culture tells us we are never good enough. If your nose is slightly crooked or your eyebrows are too furry or, heaven, forbid, you have gray hair, you have to do something and do it right away! But this is not the experience I want for myself, or my handsome sons and my beautiful daughters-in-law.  It is not the experience I want for your beautiful daughters and sons. And, it is certainly not what I want for our grandchildren.

This summer my granddaughter danced on the beach the day she turned four.  She burst into song when it suited her fancy and made silly faces without blushing.  But already at four, the culture is starting to shape her self image.  In preschool the children talk about what things may be liked; which classmates may be played with; who will or will not get invited to parties and play dates. Soon it will be what clothes measure up and who is too tall, short, dark, or fair and I have no clue how to change the conversation. But maybe by letting my hair go gray and my jawline sag, I express my joy in who I am. After all, the story of Snow White is not so much about the princess’s beauty as the queen’s rage. So here is my selfie with my hair going gray and its natural waves and cowlicks untamed.  And I know that not everyone will think I’ve made a wise choice, but that’s okay.  For one thing I’ve learned is that if someone doesn’t like the way I look, it says very little about me, but it speaks volumes about them.

So love your face.  And for those of you who’ve spent distressing moments in front of the the mirror lately, here is some love and some Michael Bublé.

 

There’s No Place Like Home

It had become a habit, gazing across the plain. For hours she would stand willing her eyes to see what she most hoped to find, a figure running to her out of the prairie’s haze, that foolish little dog scampering at her side. Emily, always so driven by farm work and duty, had lost all sense of purpose.  The twister had swept it away along with the child. But time passes and the damage is set aright, at least the damage you can see. The farmhouse and the chicken coop stood repaired finer than new and for Em, almost by magic, because it had happened around her as she waited and watched the desolate landscape. If only she could change the things she had said. If only she had been mindful of what was truly important. Then Dorothy would still be filling the empty spaces with her laughter and this place, where Em had come as a bride and toiled away her youth, would still feel like home. Inspired by “The Wizard of Oz—Chapters 23 & 24”, by L. Frank Baum.

Thoughts of home collect like frost on the window panes this time of year. And though I try to keep my eyes focused on the here and now, the patterns and swirls of Decembers long past fill my vision, leaving me peering at the present through a veil of memories. Here shivers an angel in the nativity play clothed in a threadbare white gown and a prickly halo, breathing in the aromas of popcorn and cedar. There lingers an adolescent staring into the velvety darkness of a too silent night, the Christmas tree and her face reflected on the cold glass. Up in the corner a teenager smooths her party dress as she waits for the current love of her life. Near the sill a young mother kneels amid a pile of crumpled paper, smashed bows and two giggling boys. And everywhere the faces of loved ones, smiling or stern, appear briefly in the rime before the warmth of my breath melts them away.

The holidays for me, as for many, are bittersweet. Each year I find myself struggling to reconcile the memories that comfort me with those that still cause me pain. How is it, I wonder, that I repeatedly come to the same conflicted state, wanting to dive into the festivities with both feet, but afraid of what such an immersion might mean. And as I fret about dipping my toe in the seasonal tide, a great wave of melancholy washes over me, leaving me struggling to stay afloat and I suspect that the recollections I cling to for salvation are the same remembrances that are pulling me down. As counterintuitive as it may seem, I sense now is the moment to let them go. For in my desire to recreate home in the image of my past experiences, I fail to appreciate the home that is already here. How lucky that this year a simple moment of shared joy reminded me of the beauty of the place where I am.

There comes that time at Thanksgiving dinner when the plates are empty and the cutlery lays silent and those gathered at the table bask in that pause before dessert. Into this quiet I reminisced about my mother’s dinners and admitted that next to her gold standard of holiday meals mine felt a little like pyrite. My family offered me assurances about my cooking and the meal we had just enjoyed, even though I wondered if the words reflected their love and kindness more than the quality of the food. It seemed the perfect moment for dessert and my son presented his three-year-old daughter with her first ever slice of pumpkin pie. To say she was transported by the experience would not be an overstatement. She squealed with her first bite and relished each bite after with an enthusiasm that delighted the rest of us. See, my children told me, here is someone who will remember her grandmother’s dinners as being the ultimate of holiday dining.

So this Christmas when the memories, good and bad, started flooding back, I tried to welcome them, but not let them dictate my expectations for the season. Just as Dorothy will return to a new farmhouse and Auntie Em will welcome back a child made new by her experiences, we have to honor what was, but embrace what is. As the movie-Dorothy reminds us, “There’s no place like home.” For home never exists in the past, but always in the present. It is that place you cannot map for it resides in the heart and though it might spend years in close association with one set of walls, or one kind of holiday, it is sure to travel, to migrate, to change in ways we cannot imagine, but its appearance will surprise us when we least expect it and we will find that home is always waiting right where we are.

Wishing you blessings and joy in the coming New Year!

If You Go Out In The Woods Today

Leaves. The lion hated leaves. He hated their color and their smell. He hated how they tangled in his mane and crunched beneath his feet. He hated their sheer numbers. For as new leaves sprouted on the ancient trees, their old dead ancestors piled up on the forest floor. But most of all the lion hated their voracious appetites. On sunny days, the leaves overhead gobbled up every ray and beam until all that was left to brighten the glade were sickly, green leftovers that drifted down from the canopy’s feast. And on rainy days the leaves that blanketed the ground sucked in every drop and splash, so to quench his thirst, the royal cat was forced to lick the faces and backsides of his detested foes. The lion and the leaves were at war and the leaves were winning. To escape, the lion knew he would have to leave the forest. He would have to venture out into the world, friendless and frightened. And for that, he needed a miracle. Something or someone so extraordinary that he could dust off his battered bravery and step into sunlight untainted by leaves.  Inspired by “The Wizard of Oz, Chapter 6 The Cowardly Lion” by L. Frank Baum

I’ve wasted a lot of time being miserable and a lot of energy trying to mend what is hopelessly broken. I’ve squandered years on people who devalue me and bartered away joy for security and acceptance. And even in the realization that my current situation is no longer healthy, no longer feeding my spirit and my soul, my first instinct is to find the fault in myself, believing if I fill up my gaps the rest of my life will fall into place. If only it were that simple.

Empires have been built on self-help schemes that claim getting fit, getting happy and getting rich is only a credit card transaction away. Gurus of every persuasion play on our self-doubts to convince us the good life is as effortless as an attitude adjustment. And even those closest to us smile from the midst of their own challenges and ask, “Have you X-ed?  Have you Y-ed?  Have you Z-ed?”, needing our answer to be “Oh, yes.  All is well. You needn’t worry about me anymore.” And in our heart of hearts, we want easy answers. We want the path to be painless. We want to make lemonade out of the lemons dumped on our doorsteps. But sometimes our life-lemons are so rotten and pulpy that even our best attempts will never produce something sweet. And there comes a day when we have to acknowledge that no amount of tinkering with the recipe is going to fix the bitterness and on that day we have to be brave enough to dump the whole batch.    

Dorothy’s friends in Oz each believed they had a gap to fill, that somehow a vital piece of their make-up had been omitted and, as a result, their lives were meaningless. As privileged observers, we watch the film or read the book and we know the Scarecrow is smart, the Tinman is loving and the Cowardly Lion is really quite brave. But we fail to see those truths when we consider ourselves. To share the grandstand in the Emerald City with the heroes of Oz, we too must leave the cornfield and the forest; we must let our rusted parts be oiled and flexed back into usefulness; and we must accept the possibility of distractions like witches and flying monkeys.

Oz is everywhere and none of us travels the yellow brick road alone. Out of those moments of despair, we have to remind ourselves that wisdom, love and courage have brought us this far and are waiting, even now, for the next call to action. We just have to remember to be brave.

Stuck

Background art for Sleeping Beauty by Eyvind Earle, 1959.

What the nanny saw–What can I tell you about that day?  More than a hundred years have passed and I am an old woman. Memory is no longer my handmaid, but I will draw her into service if first you speak plainly to me. Tell me true, have I grown old in marrow and bone as my mother and grandmother before me?  I was in my prime and sprightly when Princess Aurora discovered the spinning wheel and sent us to our slumbers.  Now a crone scowls at me from the mirror, but I did not live those years.  I did not live. The princess awoke bursting with life as ripe as a summer peach, but those who shared her sleep bend like ancient willows and fade like autumn roses. Are we old before our time or are we living beyond our years?  It is a puzzle that tests my wits, but I can find no answer.

Illustration for Sleeping Beauty by Liz Wong

My sorrows aside now, let me tell you about that day. The princess was a beauty and sweet.  But never more sweet than when webs were spinning behind her green eyes. It seemed she knew, even from a child, that only the merry and fulsome paraded past her window—that the light and laughter hid darkness and tears. In the scullery, they counted on her kindness and the gifts she would tuck among the dinner plates for those with miseries at home. How she guessed the truth of grieving widows and hungry tots, I cannot avow, but maids gossip on staircases and footmen whisper in halls.  Perhaps she had been seeking the spindle all her days.

She awoke that morning quiet and mournful, with eyes that would not meet my own.  “Why so glum, Your Highness?” I asked her. “Whatever your worry, tis not the end of the world.”  But, in truth, it was.  She had long been at her lessons when the tutor, a dozy, old sot, awoke from a nap to find her vanished from her writing desk.  All in a flurry, stable boys and chamberlains, parlor maids and almoners flew through the palace calling out her name. The queen, in her bedroom, wept. I cannot speak to the tales of an old woman waiting at the wheel, for that is not what I saw.  In that last heartbeat before we tumbled into darkness, I threw open the door at the top of the tower and I saw Princess Aurora, her hand upon the spindle, smiling at her finger, pricked and beaded with blood.  Inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale “Little Briar Rose”.

I’m stuck!  Without benefit of burning bush or fiery wheel, this lunchtime epiphany smacked me right between the eyes, leaving me open-mouthed and staring at my last bite of salad. Salad–my standard weekday lunch–my default when I can think of nothing else to eat. Amid the chaos, salad has been a mainstay, an easy choice, a bulwark in the face of confusion.  I read somewhere that Einstein always wore sweaters, so he didn’t have to waste his time on choices sartorial.  Salads are my culinary equivalent.  But as I considered the lettuce, dangling from my fork like a limp and oily banner, I realized I had fallen into a rut, perpetually standing at the salad bar while around me the pastas and the panini; the goulashes and the gyros languished untouched.

This is not what I expected.  How could I be stuck?  Map the last eight years of my life and you’ll witness my pinball progression.  Four moves, three jobs, one divorce and a graduate degree, stuck is the last thing I should be.  But there it was staring me in the face and dripping Italian dressing on my spreadsheets. To my surprise, realizing my state came as a relief.  For what is stuck, can be unstuck.  In fact therein lies the stuff of great literature.  Stories, the really good ones–whether fiction or fact–are about people trading in their Velcro for Teflon.  I can do that.  You can do that.  It only takes a shift in perspective.

I’ll allow that shifting a viewpoint isn’t always as easy as picking a burger over a bowl of lettuce.  Sometimes it takes a jolt to the system like Dorothy’s tornado or Jonah’s great fish or sticking your finger on a spindle to make you see that the safe cocoon you’ve wrapped around your life has grown too small.  Sleeping Beauty could have chosen to turn away when she came upon the chance to learn something new, something that was not part of her limited and artificial world.  It is so easy to opt for what feels safe, when the great universe beyond the edge of your knowledge and experience rises up so huge and scary.  And once you chosen the new over the known, it’s natural to take time to process, to sleep on it as the house spins and the sea roars and the vines grow up around the castle walls.  But when we’re rested and ready, when we square our shoulders and step up to the edge, we realize that this is what life is all about, seeking the whats and the what ifs and, most importantly, sharing what we learn along the way.

(The video included here by The Avett Brothers is wonderful, except for the first 50 seconds or so, which is kind of lame.  But if you stick it out, I guarantee, you’ll be glad you did.  Trust me!)

 

Finding Your Voice

Seeing her there, the crystal casket shattering the sunset, he believed he had never seen a vision more beautiful.  Her hair black as ebony, her lips red as blood, her skin white as snow.  But she lay as dead, a curious assortment of short, burly men arranged around her resting place in postures of misery.  “Who is she?” he called to the mourners and in one choked voice, they replied “Snow White.”  In his heart, he knew he must possess this beauty, that his health, his happiness, his very sanity depended on being able to cast his eyes daily upon Snow White.  “Make haste,” he called to his page.  “Run and tell the king’s builders they must construct a plinth, one suitable to hold the most beautiful object the kingdom has ever seen.  And tell them to place it in front of the window by my bed.”  In that way he knew with the first light of day and the last light of evening, his eyes would rest on the face of Snow White.  “Good dwarves,” he said.  “I am a prince.  I have gold.  Let’s make a deal.”  Inspired by the Grimm Brothers’ fairy tale “Snow White”.

“Mine!”  The word is spoken with the bold confidence unique to toddlers.  She sets her chin and with her steady, blue gaze traps me in the unenviable spot of having to tell my beloved granddaughter, “No, that’s not yours. That’s mine.”  Let’s face it.  I would give this child anything that is in my power to give.  And even though she has just claimed my precious iPad, my first inclination is to let her have it.  Wouldn’t she love me all the more if I did?  Isn’t it selfish of me to deny her?  But the small measure of common sense I still possess tells me capitulation would not be good for either of us, so I quietly contradict her.  She smiles.  This was a test and we both passed.  Hurray!

Macie is just learning about the line between what is hers and what belongs to someone else.  She is only vaguely aware that sometimes others’ needs take precedence over her own and that “I want that” wishes are not always granted.  These are difficult lessons.  I tell her parents to stay strong, but I remember how challenging it is to lovingly confront a half-pint narcissist bent on world domination.  Stored among my memories is my son’s birthday declaration, “I’m six years old.  Now I can do anything I want!” When I popped that balloon, I broke my own heart.  Such freedom doesn’t come at any age.

Jon Provost–“Timmy Martin”

In childhood, freely voicing your desires is tricky business.  Timing and intonation can mean the difference between a dream fulfilled and bitter disappointment.  And woe to the kid who has to negotiate the vague and transitory line between need and want.  In the early 60s, parents swooned over Timmy Martin, the dimpled cherub who had so few needs he was raised by the family pet. Timmy never required anything that Lassie could not provide. And though not once did he actually fall down a well, week after week his faithful collie rescued him from dire situations both literal and existential.  If at birth every child was issued a selfless Lassie all their own, I imagine the world would be a much healthier place.

Certainly, Snow White could have benefited from a cunning canine companion–a Toto or a Nana who would have sensed when things at the castle were about to turn ugly.  A dog, wise to the ways of royal intrigue, could have saved the poor princess with a simple act of judicious forgetfulness–a misplaced bone on the stairs outside the Queen’s boudoir and, quick as an inattentive step, “ding, dong the…(you know the rest)”.  As the new queen, Snow could have charted her own future.  Or was the prince’s kiss really the culmination of her dreams?  Of course, when she awoke with a lover and a life already settled, it would have been selfish for her to express a conflicting desire. If it’s one thing fairy tale princesses know, it’s not to make a fuss.

We have all done time in Snow White’s glass box, keeping silent about our dreams and needs, because voicing them would have been inconvenient.  We have also ridden through metaphoric forests as the prince, loudly laying claim to the objects of our affection while overlooking the humanity within.  It’s not easy.  We’re all toddlers when it comes to knowing when to speak up and when to give ground.  With each new relationship, we have to start from scratch.  Maybe finding our voice is easier when we remember that all of us, beauty and beast, carry in our hearts the same basic desires–to love and be loved and to feel respected and safe. That is my wish for Snow White and her prince–that their happily ever after is big enough for more than one voice and more than one dream.  Certainly, that is my wish for Macie and for you.

As if Mumford and Sons wasn’t enough, here is some excellent bonus material–a wonderful poem by Delia Sherman, “Snow White to the Prince”.

Shoeless

Where had she lost the shoes?  Dorothy rubbed the dust out of her eyes and considered the riddle of her stockinged feet.  Moments before she had hit the ground like a pint-sized meteor, tumbling head over heels through the buffalo grass and startling the grasshoppers into spontaneous acrobatics.  Pushing herself upright, she wondered what else was lost?  The basket, packed tight with her second best dress and the Munchkins’ farewell gifts, no longer hung on her arm.  And where was Toto? Was he already chasing Auntie Em’s chickens through the barnyard or was he wandering the desert that divided Oz and the civilized world? “Toto?” Perhaps some unused magic still clung to the cotton of her stockings and if she closed her eyes and tapped her heels, it would carry her little dog the rest of the way home.  But before she could try, the weeds rustled and parted and with a yip Toto hopped into her lap. Like Dorothy he seemed surprised by her shoeless state.  So much had depended on those silver slippers and they would have been an uncommon comfort in a land without magic. Overhead crows cawed in a cloudless sky and a feeble breeze tickled her nose with the scent of hot earth and cowpies.  “Toto,” she sighed, “I’ve a feeling we’re not in Oz anymore.”  Inspired by L. Frank Baum’s “The Wizard of Oz—Chapter XXIII

Dorothy Gale at sixty–my imagination flares and I see her standing in her garden at the end of the day, a figure so real she is more memory than fantasy.  Her cotton dress is faded from sun and countless washings.  Her loosely bound hair is threaded with silver.  On her feet she wears broken down boots, cracked at the heel and scuffed at the toe,  their color as gray as prairie dust. Purchased at a store in Kansas City, they were Uncle Henry’s final pair.  Dorothy knows they belong on the trash pile, but to her they are more than boots and she suspects they will be sitting in their place by the backdoor long after the wind has swept her footsteps away. Though the hard life of a Kansas homestead is etched on her face, Dorothy’s eyes still hold the wonder of a world beyond the rainbow.

Not long ago a friend asked me how I felt now that I was “really sixty”.  I sputtered about looking for an answer, searching to see if I could put a finger on my newly attained sixty-ness, but at that spot in my psyche that is essentially me, sixty hadn’t settled in.  Or maybe I had barred the door and refused it admittance.  This same friend turned sixty last April and she had faced the milestone head-on with a house full of celebrants and presents piled on her hearthstone.  But as my birthday neared, I became a master at deflecting invitations to celebrate, burying that small, hard seed of discomfort about my age ever deeper under a compost heap of denial.  Inevitably, by the time my birthday arrived I was sick, my subconscious opting for a viral infection rather than dealing with the transition out of my fifties.

If my parents were alive, they would be telling me to suck it up and get on with the business at hand.  Stoicism had been burned into their DNA by uncounted generations of Celts (mother’s side) and Vikings (father’s). It doesn’t take much to imagine my ancestors blowing raspberries at me from over the centuries.  After all, turning a year older is the work of only a moment.  As my mother always said of her own birthdays, it’s just another day.  But this year, it felt like I had arrived at the edge of a chasm and contemplating the crossing had me in despair.  What waits on the other side?

Original illustration by W.W. Denslow.

Until I reached my fifties, my life had progressed in a fairly predictable fashion.  The cultural footwear I had been fitted with at birth worked well for the standard set of heartbreaks and joys I’d encountered along my way, but they’d also adapted to the side-trips that were uniquely my own. By fifty-five, I had a reasonable, though sometimes disquieting, expectation that the rest of my life would progress not unlike my parents’ or my grandparents’.  But then everything changed. A friend of mine from Kenya recently described his community’s struggles as “a bit of hell over here” and with these simple words he elegantly captured those long periods of loss that every group, every individual, must face.  But the journey forward after we’ve survived our “bit of hell” also has its challenges.  When we return to solid ground, unshod and footsore, we realize that our before-maps no longer fit our after-topography.  Personally, to put paid to my fifties meant I had to regroup and face the years ahead without signposts or OnStar or even a yellow brick road. It seems we never stop coming-of-age.

In her memoir “Wild”, Cheryl Strayed describes the loss of one of her hiking boots off the side of a mountain on the Pacific Crest Trail.  In a moment of stark and breathtaking realization that this most precious of objects is irretrievable, she pitches its mate into the trees and stands on the trail shoeless.  Reading this, I panicked.  I panicked for Cheryl, I panicked for Dorothy and I panicked for myself. How do you take the next step when there is nothing to protect your dear and tender toes?

When Moses went tending his sheep and stumbled on the burning bush, the Lord told him to take off the shoes from his feet, because the place where he stood was holy ground (Exodus 3:5).  With nothing separating his skin and the earth, Moses was at his most vulnerable.  Vulnerability is uncomfortable and frightening and we spend our whole lives trying to escape the feeling of exposure that comes when you realize there is nothing between you and the rock-strewn unpredictability of Life.  So at sixty I stand barefoot, reminding myself to appreciate the significance of each step along the shadowed path ahead and to cherish every grain of sand, every muddy patch, and every sacred stone.

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.)